For those who care about the history of free speech and the framer's intent- read Stevens- and especially the bolded footnote at the bottom. :
Justice Stevens, in his dissenting opinion, explains that that the framers of the United States Constitution did not have corporations in mind when they accorded Americans the right of free speech. Corporations are not even mentioned in the US Constitution. This fact is particularly salient because the five-vote majority -- which included the court's four most conservative judges -- have long claimed to opposed "judicial activism" -- a sin US conservatives attribute to liberal-minded judges. Conservatives such as Justice Scalia claim, as a matter of principle, that "founder's intent" (original meaning theory) ought to guide the high court. Hence, the conservative majority's ruling in this case is glaringly inconsistent with the professed ideology. Stevens:
The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. 55 While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even “the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty,”given that “at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign.” Shelledy, Autonomy, Debate, and Corporate Speech, 18 Hastings Const. L. Q. 541, 578 (1991); cf. Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819) (Marshall, C. J.) (“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it”); Eule, Promoting Speaker Diversity:Austin and Metro Broadcasting, 1990 S. Ct. Rev. 105, 129(“The framers of the First Amendment could scarcely haveanticipated its application to the corporation form. That,of course, ought not to be dispositive. What is compelling, however, is an understanding of who was supposed to be the beneficiary of the free speech guaranty—the individual”).In light of these background practices and understandings, it seems to me implausible that the Framers believed “the freedom of speech” would extend equally to all corporate speakers, much less that it would preclude legislatures from taking limited measures to guard against corporate capture of elections.
The Court observes that the Framers drew on diverse intellectual sources, communicated through newspapers,and aimed to provide greater freedom of speech than had existed in England. Ante, at 37. From these (accurate)observations, the Court concludes that “[t]he First Amendment was certainly not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society’s most salient media.” Ibid. This conclusion is far from certain, given that many historians believe the Framers were focused on prior restraints on publication and did not understand the First Amendment to “prevent the subsequent punishment of such [publications] as may be deemed contrary to the public welfare.” Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S.697, 714 (1931). Yet, even if the majority’s conclusion were correct, it would tell us only that the First Amendment was understood to protect political speech in certain media. It would tell us little about whether the Amendment was understood to protect general treasury electioneering expenditures by corporations, and to what extent.
As a matter of original expectations, then, it seems absurd to think that the First Amendment prohibits legislatures from taking into account the corporate identity of a sponsor of electoral advocacy. . . . . JUSTICE SCALIA criticizes the foregoing discussion for failing to adduce statements from the founding era showing that corporations were understood to be excluded from the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. Ante, at 1–2, 9. Of course, JUSTICE SCALIA adduces no statements to suggest the contrary proposition, or even to suggest that the contrary proposition better reflects the kind of right that the drafters and ratifiers of the Free Speech Clause thought they were enshrining. Although JUSTICE SCALIA makes a perfectly sensible argument that an individual’s right to speak entails a right to speak with others for a common cause, cf. MCFL, 479 U. S. 238, he does not explain why those two rights must be precisely identical, or why that principle applies to electioneering by corporations that serve no “common cause.” Ante, at 8. Nothing in his account dislodges my basic point that members oft he founding generation held a cautious view of corporate power and a narrow view of corporate rights (not that they“despised” corporations, ante, at 2), and that they conceptualized speech in individualistic terms. If no prominent Framer bothered to articulate that corporate speech would have lesser status than individual speech, that may well be because the contrary proposition—if not also the very notion of “corporate speech”—was inconceivable. 56J., concurring), it respects their “dignity and choice,” Cohen v. California, 403 U. S. 15, 24 (1971), and it facilitates the value of “individual self-realization,” Redish, The Value of Free Speech, 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. 591, 594 (1982). Corporate speech, however, is derivative speech, speech by proxy. A regulation such as BCRA §203 may affect the way in which individuals disseminate certain messages through the corporate form, but it does not prevent anyone from speaking in his or her own voice. “Within the realm of [campaign spending] generally,” corporate spending is “furthest from the core of political expression.” Beaumont, 539 U. S., at 161, n. 8. It is an interesting question “who” is even speaking when a business corporation places an advertisement that endorses or attacks a particular candidate. Presumably it is not the customers or employees, who typically have no say in such matters. It cannot realistically be said to be the shareholders, who tend to be far removed from the day-to-day decisions of the firm and whose political preferences may be opaque to management. Perhaps the officers or directors of the corporation have the best claim to be the ones speaking, except their fiduciary duties generally prohibit them from using corporate funds for personal ends. Some individuals associated with the corporation must make the decision to place the ad, but the idea that these individuals are thereby fostering their self expression or cultivating their critical faculties is fanciful. It is entirely possible that the corporation’s electoral message will conflict with their personal convictions. Takeaway the ability to use general treasury funds for some of those ads, and no one’s autonomy, dignity, or political quality has been impinged upon in the least.
From the footnote:
Indeed, it has been“claimed that the notion of institutional speech . . . did not exist in post revolutionary America.” Fagundes, State Actors as First Amendment Speakers, 100 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1637, 1654 (2006); see also Bezanson, Institutional Speech, 80 Iowa L. Rev. 735, 775 (1995) (“In the intellectual heritage of the eighteenth century, the idea that free speech was individual and personal was deeply rooted and clearly manifest in the writings of Locke, Milton, and others on whom the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights drew”). Given that corporations were conceived of as artificial entities and do not have the technical capacity to “speak,” the burden of establishing that the Framers and ratifiers understood “the freedom of speech” to encompass corporate speech is, I believe, far heavier than the majority acknowledges.
Stevens points to one important "speech right" that the -- now discarded -- campaign finance laws upheld:
There is yet another way in which laws such as §203 can serve First Amendment values. Interwoven with Austin’s concern to protect the integrity of the electoral process is a concern to protect the rights of shareholders from a kind of coerced speech: electioneering expenditures that do not “reflec[t] [their] support.” 494 U. S., at 660–661. When corporations use general treasury funds to praise or attack a particular candidate for office, it is the shareholders, as the residual claimants, who are effectively footing the bill. Those shareholders who disagree with the corporation’s electoral message may find their financial investments being used to undermine their political convictions. |
