"Miller" test

The U.S. Supreme Court has created a three-part test, known as the "Miller" test, to determine whether a work is obscene. The "Miller" test asks:
 * (a) whether the “average person applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The Supreme Court has clarified that only “the first and second prongs of the "Miller" test &mdash; appeal to prurient interest and patent offensiveness &mdash; are issues of fact for the jury to determine applying contemporary community standards.” As for the third prong, “[t]he proper inquiry is not whether an ordinary member of any given community would find serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value in allegedly obscene material, but whether a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole.”