The Market Metaphor, Radicalized: How a Capitalist Theology Trumped Democracy

Abstract An entanglement between economic and political thought stands as a causal factor behind Trump's 2016 victory. Enshrined as constitutional law, this way of thinking allows wealth, whether a candidate's personal wealth or the wealth of her supporters, to serve as a requirement for mounting a viable campaign (and for maintaining one beyond its natural life cycle). It also allows vulgar, misleading, and hateful speech to play as large a role as a campaign or its supporters desire. Plutocracy and illiberal populism are among the reasons to revisit the Supreme Court's longstanding use of a market metaphor to ascertain the First Amendment's demands. Now an unstable and politicized facet of constitutional interpretation, the “marketplace of ideas” demands attention. In the space of forty years (Buckley v. Valeo to McCutcheon v. FEC), the Court moved from (a) an open marketplace as a metaphor for a robust speech environment that would lead to democratic responsiveness and public welfare, to (b) an unregul...