Law Commons^™

Can You Hear Me Now? Corporate Censorship And Its Troubling Implications For The First Amendment, Terence Lau, William Wines

Terence Lau

The day when standing on a soapbox in a public park was an effective way to voice one’s dissent has passed. In this paper we argue that enormous disparities in economic power allow powerful corporations to silence opinions that they consider unfit for public dissemination. In commercial speech, the U.S. Supreme Court has in the past two terms handed down decisions dealing with “coerced speech.” Another problem in commercial speech is “coerced silence” or “coerced ignorance.” The paper begins with the Supreme Court’s doctrine that the First Amendment protects both the speaker’s right to speak and the public’s right to …