Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Yale Law Journal

Abstract

Peaceful labor picketing, once treated as an exercise of freedom of speech, has been implicitly relegated by the Supreme Court to the status of an economic activity subject to extensive regulation. This doctrine should be seriously reexamined, particularly in light of more recent developments giving full First Amendment protection to peaceful non-labor picketing and substantial First Amendment protection to commercial advertising. This Note argues that consumer picketing' that does not coerce the listener is expression entitled to First Amendment protection. In reaching this conclusion, the Note rejects both the argument that labor picketing is inherently coercive and the Court's recent suggestion that labor picketing does not concern a public issue. The Note maintains that the failure to extend constitutional protection to consumer picketing, when viewed together with the increased protection given commercial advertising, reveals substantive economic policy judgments made in the guise of First Amendment adjudication.

First Page

938

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2307/796072

Volume

91

Publication Date

1982

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