which supreme court case forms the basis for commercial speech protection today
Commercial speech Until the 1976 Supreme Court case Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, commercial speech in the United States was viewed as an "unprotected" category of speech beyond the pale of First Amendment protection.[4] Indeed, the idea of commercial speech was first introduced by the Supreme Court when it upheld Valentine v. Chrestensen in 1942, which ruled that commercial speech in public is not constitutionally protected.[5] In upholding the regulation, the Supreme Court said, "We are...clear that the Constitution imposes...no restraint on government as respects purely commercial advertising". This ruling, however, would be overturned with Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council (1976) and Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission (1980).[2]
Clear and present danger Antiwar protests during World War I gave rise to several important free speech cases related to sedition and inciting violence. In the 1919 case Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court held that an antiwar activist did not have a First Amendment right to advocate draft resistance.[3][4] In his majority opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. introduced the clear and present danger test, which would become an important concept in First Amendment law; but the Schenck decision did not formally adopt the test.[3] Holmes later wrote that he intended the clear and present danger test to refine, not replace, the bad tendency test.[5][6] Although sometimes mentioned in subsequent rulings, the clear and present danger test was never endorsed by the Supreme Court as a test to be used by lower courts when evaluating the constitutionality of legislation that regulated speech.[7][8]