Miller V. California (1973)

In 1973 Marvin Miller was found guilty in the Superior Court of Orange County of having violated California Penal Code 311.2 (a), which is a misdemeanor.  He did this by knowingly  mailing advertisements for “adult” books which were determined to be obscene to unwilling recipients.  Miller argued that he should be protected by the first amendment, so the case ended up at the Supreme Court. The question before the court was whether the sale and distribution of obscene material was protected under the First Amendment's freedom of speech guarantee. The Court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision that obscene materials did not enjoy First Amendment protection.
 
  This was a landmark case because it defined where the line is in a citizen's protection by the first amendment, and it has remained the same since.  I'm not sure exactly where I land on this case, because on the one hand Miller was doing his job, advertising his product on a mass scale.  On the other hand a lot of the recipients of Miller's mail were unsuspecting and unwilling to have "obscene" material in their mail.  Although I don't think Miller should have been punished for this, I do agree that sending such material in the mail should be illegal.