ABSTRACT
In Valentine v. Chrestensen the Court tersely held that government could restrict or even ban commercial leafleting without running afoul of the constitutional right to free speech. Commercial advertising was also a category of expression that the Supreme Court considered to be outside of the First Amendment. Although the clear purpose of the Central Hudson test was to foment streamlined and consistent resolution of commercial speech cases, it ultimately created more problems than it fixed. One potential explanation for the continuing confusion over the circumstances in which First Amendment protection will be extended to commercial speech is that a sizable portion of the Court's jurisprudence in the area has been hashed out in cases pertaining to advertising by attorneys. The constitutional status of commercial speech remains in a state of flux, to the point that litigants in many commercial speech cases, such as Loril- lard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly asked the Court to dispose of the Central Hudson test altogether.
