De-bates and re-bates: The Supreme Court's latest commercial speech class

The commercial speech doctrine has lost most of its original, economics-based, coherence since its enunciation twenty years ago. The seminal Supreme Court cases relied explicitly on a consumer-sovereignty model, stressing the adverse impact of speech restrictions on consumer information and consumer prices. Likewise, the Court was well attuned to the ways that speech restrictions benefited the regulator rather than the supposed beneficiaries, consumers. Recently, the Court has adhered to its original economic perspective only fitfully Therefore, the newer commercial speech cases are unconvincing in rationale and unpredictable in result. The Court's most recent commercial speech decision, 44 Liquormart, Inc. v Rhode Island, illustrates the doctrinal chaos currently known as the commercial speech doctrine.