Law & Ethics in the Business Environment Week 1 Response 1

Law & Ethics in the Business Environment Week 1 Response 1

Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your peers’ posts (as well as any comments made by your instructor) in a substantive manner and provide information or concepts that they may not have considered. Each response should have a minimum of 150 words. Support your position by using information from the week’s readings. You are encouraged to post your required replies earlier in the week to promote more meaningful and interactive discourse in this discussion forum

Below there are two of my classmate’s discussion that needs I need to response to their names are Jairo Murillo and Racquel Hood

Jairo Murillo Discussion

Why does it make a difference whether the speech in which Coors was engaged (disclosure of the alcohol content) was commercial speech or noncommercial speech?

If it fell under commercial speech, he would have had the right to provide that information, while still being protected under the First Amendment with few restrictions since it was not misleading or called for any form of illegal activity. In the case where it was noncommercial speech, he would have gotten full protection from the First amendment just like if he were in court as an individual party.

What type of speech (commercial or noncommercial) did the Supreme Court determine that Coors was engaged in?

In this case they determined he was engaged in commercial speech. This ruling was mostly in part because the attempt at putting that information on the bottle was to set Coors apart from its competitors in a way where they were being informative to their customers on what was in their drinks and what made them different. The goal was to make a profit from this distinction causing the commercial speech ruling.

Suppose Coors started to sell cocaine and wanted to disclose the purity of their cocaine on the packaging and in their advertisements. What type of speech would this be? Would disclosure of the purity of the cocaine be protected under the First Amendment?

If they were to make a statement like that, they would fall under commercial speech, this is because they are attempting to give information to the public about the purity of their product to gain an advantage over their competitors promoting sales and higher profits. In this situation they would void any of their protections they have completely due to it being unlawful to sell cocaine in the United States at the time regardless of how they present it.

Racquel Hood Discussion

· Why does it make a difference whether the speech in which Coors was engaged (disclosure of the alcohol content) was commercial speech or noncommercial speech?

According to the text, commercial speech is communicated “by or on behalf of a company or individual for the purpose of promoting a product, service, or business” (Langvardt et al., 2019, p. G3). Additionally, commercial speech is economically focused and is intended to convince a target audience to participate in a specific action, which is usually purchasing a particular product (Langvardt et al., 2019, p. G3). The type of speech makes a difference because although commercial speech is afforded certain First Amendment protection, it does not have the same amount of protection as non-commercial or political speech; therefore, Coors would not receive full protection and their constitutional right to free speech was not violated (Langvardt et al., 2019, p. 82).

· What type of speech (commercial or noncommercial) did the Supreme Court determine that Coors was engaged in?

The Supreme Court determined that Coors had engaged in commercial speech because the profit motive outweighed any additional value (Langvardt et al., 2019, p. 82).

· Suppose Coors started to sell cocaine and wanted to disclose the purity of their cocaine on the packaging and in their advertisements. What type of speech would this be? Would disclosure of the purity of the cocaine be protected under the First Amendment?

Although this type of speech would be considered commercial speech, because cocaine is illegal to consume or sell, the disclosure of cocaine purity would not be protected by the First Amendment.