Uses of free speech motivated by personal gain should still be protected.

The primary objection of the supporters of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to the decision taken in the Citizens United case seems to be that the objective of some corporations is usually the maximisation of the profits that their shareholders’ or owners receive[1]. Other considerations, we are told, take second place in the hierarchy of needs that corporations create for themselves[2]. Opponents of the Act and critics of the supreme court decision on Citizens United have attempt to claim that, because corporations’ behaviour is profit-led, corporate entities will use an unrestricted right to free speech to lie, cheat and manipulate the public[3] with the intention of boosting their returns. In other words, corporations will not use a right to free speech with the responsible aim of advocating for social change, but to enhance their own position as businesses or membership organisations. In the sections of the amendments to the United States constitution that deal with the free speech rights of groups of individuals, no distinction is made between businesses, political parties, unions, or any other sort of gathering of citizens with similar interests and aims. As far as the core principles of the legal and governmental culture of the US are concerned[4], all of these organisations are “corporate”. The first amendment to the US constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment or religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therefore; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition to government for redress of grievances.”[5] The right to peaceably assemble draws no distinction between peaceful assembly for political purposes and peaceful assembly for other reasons. Discrimination of this type would only have served to undermine the wide range of freedoms that the Bill of Rights guaranteed. After all, people obtain power through acting collectively. Any limit on the forms that collective action can take is also a limit on the ability of groups within society to respond to powerful actors by leveraging strength of numbers. “Corporation”- despite its contemporary connotations- remains a very broad and generic term. Even a large corporation is still directed by the approval and consent of its members. Restrictions on corporate speech represent of violation of the individual’s right to free speech Irrespective of the content of what an individual has to say, of the statements that he makes in both the public and the private spheres, liberal democratic constitutions (not just the US constitution) impose very few restrictions on that individual’s right to speak. An individual that makes baseless statements that harm the social standing and reputation of an individual may be subject to civil proceedings, but is extremely rare for individuals to be censored or criminalised merely for expressing ideas or opinions. Even if the individual is lying, advocating extreme political ideologies or acting in his own interests while claiming to serve those of others, legal responses to his behaviour will be relatively limited and costly to deploy. Corporations, as noted above, are often driven by acquisitive and self-interested objectives. Individuals are just as capable of being motivated by monetary gain, and are just as capable of concealing this motive as corporations. However objectionable the use of free speech by natural persons has been in the past, states have always encountered significant protest and dissent when they have attempted to control the content of individual expression. As discussed in a previous debatepedia article[6], the possibility that an individual, natural or legal, might abuse free speech, or might be driven solely by profit, does not cancel out that individual's free speech rights. [1] “Town by town, Vermont tackles corporate personhood”. The Guardian, 05 March 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10128233 [2] “How corporations became ‘persons’”. uuworld.org, 01 May 2003. http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/157829.shtml [3] “Peculiar people”. The Economist, 24 March 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/18437755 [4] Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. Supreme Court of the United States, 21 January 2010. 558 US 50. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf [5] The Constitution of the United States of America, First Amendment. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights [6] “Constitutional Rights of the Corporate Person”. Yale Law Journal. (1982) 91 Yale LJ 1641