From 1879 until the early 1930s, American courts followed the Hicklin test, which was taken from an 1868 English case, Regina v. Hicklin. Under this test, judges considered a work to be obscene if any portion of the material had a tendency "to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."

In 1933, the Hicklin test was toppled in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, in which a federal district judge decided to allow James Joyce's "Ulysses" to be imported and sold in America. Judge John M. Woolsey focused on the literary value of the entire work and its effect on a person with average sex instincts. He defined obscene as "tending to stir the sex impulses