Limiting the rights of corporate persons would harm a wide range of organisations and limit the freedom of natural persons.

Public speech and exchanges of ideas lie at the root of political and social decision making in liberal democracies. Without a guarantee that expression will remain free and protected from government interference, the other rights discussed in the first amendment to the United States constitution would become impossible to exercise. The discussion and pursuit of religious ideas would be obstructed. The ability to challenge the actions and decisions of an incumbent government would be put at risk too[1]. Even the reporting of verifiably true information about the affairs of the state and its citizens- freedom of the press- would become hazardous without the toleration for inaccuracies and the concept of public interest that principled freedom of speech gives rise to. In order for a right to be meaningful, however, it must be possible to exercise that right effectively. A right to free movement would be meaningless if the government that guaranteed it was unable to keep its citizens safe within their communities. Similarly, free speech in liberal democracies cannot be exercised effectively without the ability to disseminate speech among a large audience, and without the ability to co-operate with others in order to do so. Isolated oratory and passing on news by word-of-mouth are not effective ways of handling information. Corporate entities have emerged as the most effective method of pooling individual resources in order to take full advantage of the benefits and freedoms of free speech and dialogue[2]. As the columnist George Will observes, in the USA “newspapers, magazines, broadcasting entities, online journalism operations- and most religious institutions- are corporate entities.”[3] The proposition side advocates depriving these bodies of many of their rights, simply because they benefit from a legal fiction that- itself- is designed to make co-operation and resources sharing among like-minded individuals- natural persons- more effective. The difficulties presented by corporate campaigning would allow the state to restrain the publication of almost any coherent, publicly distributed form of speech that was critical of politicians or their parties. The legal scholar Eugene Volokh has noted that Jim McGovern's People's Rights Amendment, which most closely resembles the proposition's mechanism, would give legislators fiat to restrict the content of newspapers by defining it as “corporate” speech that did not benefit from the same set of rights as the expressed opinions of natural persons. This is a wider application of the rule that brought Citizens United and the BCRA before the supreme court[4]. As set out in the introductory case study, the BCRA allowed the Federal Election Commission to claim that a movie (produced by a right-wing PAC) critical of democratic presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton represented a misuse of private funds that could potentially give an unfair advantage to Clinton's opponents. Under the sections of the BCRA that were struck down in 2012, and under the new laws that proposition wish to create, it would be possible for legislative bodies and the judiciary to target any and all forms of political communication produced by corporate entities without having to consider the objectives of those communications. In plainer terms, the state's power to ban and censor free speech would not be limited to statements made to lobby an electorate or to campaign in favour of a particular politician or policy. Citizens who wished to avoid being caught up in this law would be obliged to share resources via archaic legal structures such as partnerships and co-operative agreements. Assemblies of citizens could be exposed to a great deal of financial risk in such a situation. Each member of a partnership would be forced to bear the debts and legal liabilities of the entire partnership. In addition, agreements concluded by the partnership would require the consent of every partner. This is a minor inconvenience when a partnership consists of two or three people, but it would be an impossible demand to fulfil for an organisation such as the communications giant ComCast, which has a share volume of 10.5 million (as of May 2012). [1] “Taking a Scythe to the Bill of Rights”. Will, G F. The Washington Post, 05 May 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/taking-a-scythe-to-the-bill-of-ri... [2] “Infant and corporate rights”. The Economist, 07 May 2012. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/05/contested-pers... [3] “Taking a Scythe to the Bill of Rights”. Will, G F. The Washington Post, 05 May 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/taking-a-scythe-to-the-bill-of-ri... [4] “The ‘People’s Rights Amendment’ and the media”. Volokh, E. The Volokh Conspiracy, 26 April 2012. http://volokh.com/2012/04/26/the-peoples-rights-amendment-and-the-media/