United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, 5 F. Supp. 182 (S.D.N.Y. 1933), is a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in a case dealing with freedom of expression. At issue was whether James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses was obscene. In deciding it was not, Judge John M. Woolsey opened the door to importation and publication of serious works of literature that used coarse language or involved sexual subjects. The trial court's decision was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which confirmed that offensive language in a literary work is not obscene where it does not promote lust. But Judge Woolsey's trial court opinion is now more widely known, and often cited as an erudite and discerning affirmation of literary free expression. Background In 1922 James Joyce published Ulysses, his most famous work. Prior to publication as a book, the work was serialized in The Little Review, a literary magazine. In 1920 this periodical published the "Nausicäa episode", which contained a masturbation scene. Copies were mailed to potential subscribers; a girl of unknown age read it and was shocked, and a complaint was made to the Manhattan District Attorney. As the magazine could be purchased in a New York bookshop and The Little Review, the publisher, was based in the city, the local district attorney was able to prosecute in New York. Little Review publishers Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap could not argue that the chapter should be considered in light of the work as a whole, as only the offending chapter was published in the magazine issue in question. The court convicted and fined Anderson and Heap after a trial in which one of the judges stated that the novel seemed "like the work of a disordered mind". That stopped publication of Ulysses in the United States for over a decade. In 1932 Random House, which had the rights to publish the entire book in the United States, decided to bring a test case to challenge the de facto ban, so as to publish the work without fear of prosecution. It therefore made an arrangement to import the edition published in France and to have a copy seized by the U.S. Customs Service when the ship carrying the work arrived. Although Customs had been told in advance of the anticipated arrival of the book,