A 1973 Supreme Court decision ("Miller v. California") established the system of defining obscenity on the local level according to the following criteria: first, prurient appeal and patent offensiveness are to be determined by a community rather than by a national standard; second, sexually explicit materials are judged obscene only if specified as such by state or federal law; and, finally, sexually explicit communications are protected only when they are judged to be of serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. During the past five years, each criterion has created problems and aroused controversies involving the definition of a relevant community, the subjective attitudes of jurors, the development of state guidelines on obscenity, and valid judgments regarding the quality of questioned material. In addition to the confusion it has produced, the shift to local standards in obscenity prosecution has required repeated appeals to higher courts and has thereby established a process similar to the original national standard that governed judgments on obscenity. (MAI)