Discussion of First Amendment in corporate, commercial speech

Martin Redish, Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and award-winning journalist and author Steven Brill will discuss the role of the First Amendment in corporate and commercial speech on Wednesday, Oct. 17.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Northwestern Law, 375 E. Chicago Ave., in the Levy Mayer building, Lincoln Hall, Room 104. Senior lecturer Jason C. DeSanto will moderate the discussion. 

In Brill’s latest book, “Tailspin,” he 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 Redish, his 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.”