The Debate Over Corporate and Commercial Speech and the First Amendment

Join Professor Marty Redish and author Steve Brill for a fireside chat about the role of the First Amendment in corporate and commercial speech.

In Brill’s latest book, Tailspin, the award-winning journalist examines how and why major American institutions no longer serve us as they should, causing a deep rift in American society. The country is now divided, he writes, between “the protected few — the winners — who don’t need government for much and even have a stake in sabotaging the government’s responsibility to all of its citizens . . . [and] the unprotected many, who rely on government, as they always have, to protect and preserve their way of life and maybe even improve it. That divide is the essence of America’s tailspin.”

In the book, Brill writes extensively about Professor Redish’s scholarship and his role in the landmark 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which prohibited the Federal Election Commission from constraining corporate spending on political activities, thus allowing “money to enter politics as never before.”

Moderated by Professor Jason DeSanto, this promises to be a dynamic discussion about one of the most important issues of our time.