It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. "This freedom [of speech and press] . . . necessarily protects the right to receive . . . ." Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143 (1943); see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 482 (1965); Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301, 307 -308 (1965) (BRENNAN, J., concurring); cf. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925).

This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, see Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 510 (1948), is fundamental to our free society. Moreover, in the context of this case - a prosecution for mere possession of printed or filmed matter in the privacy of a person's own home - that right takes on an added dimension. For also fundamental is the right to be free, except in very limited circumstances, from unwanted governmental intrusions into one's privacy. [Stanley v. Georgia 394 U.S. 557 (1969) page 564 Justice Marshall - emphasis added]

The right of freedom of speech and press has broad scope. The authors of the First Amendment knew that novel and unconventional ideas might disturb the complacent, but they chose to encourage a freedom which they believed essential if vigorous enlightenment was ever to triumph over slothful ignorance.

This freedom embraces the right to distribute literature, Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452 , 58 S.Ct. 666, 669, and necessarily protects the right to receive it. The privilege may not be withdrawn even if it creates the minor nuisance for a community of cleaning litter from its streets. Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 162 , 60 S.Ct. 146, 151. Yet the peace, good order, and comfort of the community may imperatively require regulation of the time, place and manner of distribution. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 304 , 60 S. Ct. 900, 903, 128 A.L.R. 1352. No one supposes, for example, that a city need permit a man with a communicable disease to distribute leaflets on the street or to homes, or that the First Amendment prohibits a state from preventing the distribution of leaflets in a church against the will of the church authorities.

The association of people is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Bill of Rights. The right to educate a child in a school of the parents' choice - whether public or private or parochial - is also not mentioned. Nor is the right to study any particular subject or any foreign language. Yet the First Amendment has been construed to include certain of those rights. By Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra, the right to educate one's children as one chooses is made applicable to the States by the force of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. By Meyer v. Nebraska, supra, the same dignity is given the right to study the German language in a private school. In other words, the State may not, consistently with the spirit of the First Amendment, contract the spectrum of available knowledge.

The right of freedom of speech and press includes not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to distribute, the right to receive, the right to read (Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143 ) and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach (see Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183, 195 ) - indeed the freedom of the entire university community. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 249 -250, 261-263; Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 112 ; Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 369 . Without those peripheral rights the specific rights would be less secure. And so we reaffirm the principle of the Pierce and the Meyer cases.

In a variety of contexts this Court has referred to a First Amendment right to "receive information and ideas":

"It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. `This freedom [of speech and press] . . . necessarily protects the right to receive . . . .' Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143 (1943) . . . ." Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969).

This was one basis for the decision in Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945). The Court there held that a labor organizer's right to speak and the rights of workers "to hear what he had to say," id., at 534, were both abridged by a state law requiring organizers to register before soliciting union membership. In a very different situation, MR. JUSTICE WHITE, speaking for a unanimous Court upholding the FCC's "fairness doctrine" in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 386 -390 (1969), said

"It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail . . . . It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC." Id., at 390.

In the present case, the District Court majority held:

"The concern of the First Amendment is not with a non-resident alien's individual and personal interest in entering and being heard, but with the

rights of the citizens of the country to have the alien enter and to hear him

explain and seek to defend his views; that, as Garrison [v. Louisiana, 379

U.S. 64 (1964)] and Red Lion observe, is of the essence of self-government." 325 F. Supp., at 631. [381 U.S. 301 (1965)]