Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago
Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago is a significant legal case that addresses the tension between freedom of expression and municipal censorship regulations. At the heart of the controversy was the Times Film Corporation's application for a permit to screen the Austrian film "Don Juan," which they argued did not contain obscene content. The city of Chicago, however, required that all films be submitted for censorship review before public showing, a mandate that Times Film challenged as unconstitutional. The corporation contended that requiring prior review constituted a prior restraint on freedom of expression, protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The legal battle escalated through the federal court system, culminating in a Supreme Court hearing. Ultimately, the Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision, affirming the city's right to impose prior restraint despite concerns from dissenting justices about potential implications for broader forms of media censorship. This case highlights ongoing debates about the limits of government regulation in artistic expression and the complexities surrounding the protection of free speech.
Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago
Court: U.S. Supreme Court
Decided: March 20, 1961
Significance: This case upheld the principle of prior restraint on films, thereby continuing a pattern of treating film differently than other media
The controversy surrounding this court case arose after the Times Film Corporation, a foreign-film importer and distributor, applied for a permit to show the Austrian film, Don Juan (1956), an adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. While the film contained no obscenities or sexual scenes, Chicago’s municipal code required that films be submitted for censorship review along with applications before they could be publicly shown. The import company did not submit the film, claiming that the city’s censorship statute was “null and void on constitutional grounds.” They further stated that content of the film should not be subjected to censorship and if the city objected to the film, criminal process should not be brought against it until after Don Juan had been shown. The city denied them the permit because of the corporation’s refusal to submit the film.
The film company filed suit in federal district court, asking that the film be permitted to be shown without prior censorship review, arguing that having a censor review films “amounted to a prior restraint on freedom of expression prohibited by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” The city argued that it could not protect the citizens of Chicago against “dangers of obscenity” if prior viewing and censorship were not permitted. The district court dismissed the case and an appeals court upheld the decision.
The Times Film Corporation’s lawyers then petitioned the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. The case was unusual in that most suits were filed because films submitted for review had been refused due to the content. The lawyers argued against permitting censorship prior to the film’s viewing. In the Court’s ensuing 5-4 decision, Justice Tom C. Clark said that the prior restraint in submitting a film did not violate the First Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren, one of the dissenting justices, warned that other forms of censorship on “newspapers, journals, books, magazines, television, radio or public speeches” might be invoked as a result of this decision. He also stated that the censor in offering judgment of the film’s content does not have obligations to the public but to those who have hired him.