For many years, commercial speech was summarily excluded from First Amendment protection, without reason or logic. Starting in the mid-1970s, the Supreme Court began to extend protection but it remained strictly limited. In recent years, that protection has expanded, but both Court and scholars have refused to consider treating commercial speech as the First Amendment equivalent of traditionally protected expressive categories such as political speech or literature. Commercial Speech as Free Expression stands as the boldest statement yet for extending full First Amendment protection to commercial speech by proposing a new, four-part synthesis of different perspectives on the manner in which free expression fosters and protects expressive values. This book explains the complexities and subtleties of how the equivalency principle would function in real-life situations. The key is to recognize that as a matter of First Amendment value, commercial speech deserves treatment equivalent to that received by traditionally protected speech.

Martin H. Redish is the Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is the author of 17 books and over 100 scholarly articles. His books include Judicial Independence and the American Constitution: A Democratic Paradox (2017) and The Adversary First Amendment (2013). I have been consistently ranked among the 25 most cited legal scholars of all time by Hein Online. He has been quoted or cited in 22 Supreme Court opinions and have been included among the list of most cited researchers worldwide by the Institute for Scientific Information.