University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Volume 21 Issues 1&2 1988 Prurient Interest and Human Dignity: Pornography Regulation in West Germany and the United States Mathias Reimann University of Michigan Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, First Amendment Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, and the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Mathias Reimann, Prurient Interest and Human Dignity: Pornography Regulation in West Germany and the United States, 21 U. MICH. J. L. REFORM 201 (1988). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr/vol21/iss1/8 This Symposium Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. PRURIENT INTEREST AND HUMAN DIGNITY: PORNOGRAPHY REGULATION IN WEST GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATESt Mathias Reimann* In the United States, new perspectives are slowly emerging in the revitalized legal debate about pornography.1 The debate has been fueled by conservative as well as feminist efforts and by the appointment, work, and report of the Attorney General's Com mission on Pornography.2 In particular, feminist lawyers and writers have called attention to the effect of pornography on the status, role, and, more generally, the dignity of women in soci ety. 3 These concerns led the city councils of Indianapolis and Minneapolis to adopt ordinances that declared certain sexually explicit material to be a violation of civil rights because those materials degrade human beings.• These ordinances were de- t I am grateful to T.