Cite as: 539 U. S. 194 (2003)
Souter, J., dissenting
By the time McCarthyism began its assaults, appellee American Library Association (ALA) had developed a Library Bill of Rights against censorship, Library Bill of Rights, in Intellectual Freedom Manual, pt. 1, p. 7, and an Intellectual Freedom Committee to maintain the position that beyond enforcing existing laws against obscenity, "there is no place in our society for extra-legal efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression." Freedom to Read, in id., pt. 2, at 8; see also Krug & Harvey, in id., at xv. So far as I have been able to tell, this statement expressed the prevailing ideal in public library administration after World War II, and it seems fair to say as a general rule that libraries by then had ceased to deny requesting adults access to any materials in their collections. The adult might, indeed, have had to make a specific request, for the literature and published surveys from the period show a variety of restrictions on the circulation of library holdings, including placement of materials apart from open stacks, and availability only upon specific request.5 But aside from the isolated suggestion, see, e. g., Born, Public Libraries and Intellectual Freedom, in id., pt. 3, at 4, 9, I have not been able to find from this period any record of a library barring access to materials in its collection on a basis other than a reader's age. It seems to have been out of the question for a library to refuse a book in its collection to a requesting adult patron, or to presume to evaluate the basis for a particular request.
This take on the postwar years is confirmed by evidence of the dog that did not bark. During the second half of the
5 See, e. g., M. Fiske, Book Selection and Censorship: A Study of School and Public Libraries in California 69-73 (1959); Moon, "Problem" Fiction, in Book Selection and Censorship in the Sixties 56-58 (E. Moon ed. 1969); F. Jones, Defusing Censorship: The Librarian's Guide to Handling Censorship Conflicts 92-99 (1983); see also The Censorship of Books 173-182 (W. Daniels ed. 1954).
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