The Marketplace Metaphor and Commercial Speech Doctrine: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying about and Love Citizens United

In this article, I place the Citizens United decision in historical and doctrinal context, and argue that the decision indicates a terminal stage of the development and application of the marketplace of ideas metaphor in First Amendment law. I argue that the good news about the Citizens United decision is that it sets the stage for the abolition of the commercial speech doctrine, which resulted in lower protection for commercial speech, as previously set forth in the 1980 Central Hudson decision. This is good news because the commercial speech doctrine has become a doctrinal anomaly that threatens to undermine the reach of First Amendment protections