Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson

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Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (1952)
the Supreme Court of the United States

Syllabus

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Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court which largely marked the decline of motion picture censorship in the United States. It determined that certain provisions of the New York Education Law allowing a censor to forbid the commercial showing of any non-licensed motion picture film, or revoke or deny the license of a film deemed to be "sacrilegious," was a "restraint on freedom of speech" and thereby a violation of the First Amendment. By way of this, the decision defined film as an artistic medium protected by the Constitution's guarantee of free speech. In so doing, the Court overturned its previous decision in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915), which found that movies were not an art form worthy of First Amendment protection, but merely a business. Warning: template has been deprecated.