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Trends In First Amendment Protection Of Commercial Speech, Mary B. Nutt

Vanderbilt Law Review

Recent Development:

The first amendment guarantees that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."' Over the past few decades, the Supreme Court has applied the first amendment to commercial speech only sporadically. The Court has vacillated between refusing to apply the first amendment, liberally extending first amendment guarantees,4 and applying limited first amendment protections to commercial speech.' This expansion and contraction of first amendment protection stems partly from three factors: (1) the Court's characterization of the speech at issue as commercial or noncommercial, (2) the Court's perception of the relevant regulation as content-based …