The
Memoirs standard for obscenity prompted continued debate over the definition of obscenity and was superseded by the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in
Miller v. California, which established a more flexible three‑prong test based on local
community standards called the
Miller test. The fact that
Memoirs was only decided by a plurality of justices led to controversy over whether it was controlling law until being superseded by
Miller. This led to a decision in the 1977 Supreme Court case
Marks v. United States regarding how the holding of a case should be viewed where there is no majority supporting the rationale of any opinion and the precedential value of such a holding. In
Marks, the court held that when a split court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, "the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds" (quoting the plurality opinion of Justices
Potter Stewart,
Lewis Powell, and
John Paul Stevens in the 1976 case
Gregg v. Georgia). ==See also==