Commercial speech protection in the United States and Europe

This research focuses on the protection of the commercial speech in the United States and Europe. The protection of commercial speech is regarded as one of the most controversial issues in both European and American free speech jurisprudence. The purpose of this work is to compare different approaches to the protection of the commercial speech in the American and European countries through an analysis of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice of the European Union. This analysis demonstrates that the U.S. Supreme Court gives commercial speech intermediate level of protection. In contrast, while the European Court of Human Rights and European Court of Justice declared commercial speech to be protected, in practice both Courts deny the protection by refusing to overrule limitations on commercial speech. Moreover, both European Courts leave much discretion to Member States to decide whether or not the commercial speech should be restricted.