In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses Judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not obscene despite coarse language and sexual content, a leading decision affirming free expression.

United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, 5 F. Supp. 182, affirmed in United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce , 72 F. 705 (1934) is a landmark decision of 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, District Court Judge John Munro Woolsey opened the door to importation and publication of serious works of literature that used coarse language or involved sexual subjects.

John Munro Woolsey was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He was known "for his brilliant and poignantly phrased decisions", including several important precedents in First Amendment jurisprudence.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the twentieth century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914) and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.

Ulysses is a modernist novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. Partially serialised in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and a classic of the genre, having been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".