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Regulating The Marketplaces Of Political And Economic Ideas, Christopher S. Ford

Christopher S Ford

Ever since Justice Holmes’ famous dissent in Abrams v. United States, First Amendment jurisprudence has labored under the metaphor of a ‘marketplace of ideas.’ The government must abstain from regulating this market, courts and commentators have argued, to best ensure healthy and free competition among ideas. The Supreme Court has frequently relied on this metaphor when evaluating claims under the First Amendment, and did so prominently when deciding the recent case of Citizens United v. F.E.C. Yet the sweeping majority opinion by Justice Kennedy and strident dissent by Justice Stevens advance two fundamentally different ideas of how the marketplace of …