Commercial speech has become one of the most litigated and controversial areas of First Amendment protection. Yet the question of protecting such speech should not be in doubt.  In a new paper, law and public policy professor Martin H. Redish illustrates how reducing or excluding First Amendment protection for commercial advertising contravenes core constitutional values of free expression. Redish argues that it is time for the Supreme Court to expressly acknowledge that commercial speech properly stands on an equal footing with all other kinds of expression given full protection by the First Amendment.

• “Commercial Speech and the Values of Free Expression,” by Martin H. Redish

President Trump has promised to induce $1 trillion of new public and private investment in infrastructure over the next decade. He believes that strategy will be beneficial both for short-run, macroeconomic reasons (it will stimulate the economy) and for long-run, microeconomic reasons (it will improve productivity). A new paper from Cato scholar Ryan Bourne assesses both sets of reasoning, and finds that the case for more government investment is significantly weaker than commonly asserted.

• “Would More Government Infrastructure Spending Boost the U.S. Economy?,” by Ryan Bourne

For roughly 30 years, in the last decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th, a national movement sought to use the law to eliminate Chinese restaurants from the United States. In the Summer 2017 issue of Regulation, Gabriel J. Chin and John Ormonde look back on this lost chapter in the history of U.S. racial regulation, and consider its relevance to immigration policy today.

• Summer 2017 issue of Regulation