In the case of Pinkus, DBA Rosslyn News Co. et al. v. United States (1977), the Supreme Court ruled on whether or not a distributor could be held liable for obscenity charges based solely on their distribution of obscene materials, without regard to their knowledge of the content's nature. The court found that such liability was unconstitutional under the First Amendment and Fifth Amendment due process clause protections against vague criminal statutes. In this case, Pinkus had been convicted for distributing obscene material but argued he did not know it was obscene because he did not read everything he distributed - only checking if they were magazines or books before selling them wholesale to retailers who then sold them to consumers directly. The ruling clarified that while distributors can be held accountable for disseminating obscenely explicit material, there must also be proof beyond reasonable doubt that they knew what they were distributing contained such content in order to establish guilt.

In the dissenting opinion for Pinkus, DBA Rosslyn News Co. et al. v. United States, Justice Brennan argued that the majority's decision to uphold Pinkus' conviction was incorrect because it failed to properly interpret and apply obscenity laws in relation to First Amendment rights. He contended that the materials in question were not legally obscene as they did not meet all three criteria established by Miller v. California: appeal predominantly towards prurient interest, depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lack serious literary or scientific value when taken as a whole rather than isolated parts of content being considered separately from their context within each work overall. Furthermore, he criticized how jury instructions didn't adequately explain this standard nor require proof beyond reasonable doubt about national community standards being violated instead of local ones only which could vary widely across different regions thereby potentially leading to inconsistent enforcement nationwide depending on where cases happened thus undermining fairness under law due process protections constitutionally guaranteed for everyone equally regardless location differences among them too.