Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 587.0

426  CITIZENS  UNITED  v.  FEDERAL  ELECTION  COMM’N 

Opinion of Stevens, J. 

understandings of those who drafted and ratiﬁed the Amend­
ment.  Perhaps this is because there is not a scintilla of evi­
dence  to  support  the  notion  that  anyone  believed  it  would 
preclude regulatory distinctions based on the corporate 
form.  To the extent that the Framers’ views are discernible 
and  relevant  to  the  disposition  of  this  case,  they  would  ap­
pear to cut strongly against the majority’s position. 

This is not only because the Framers and their contempo­
raries conceived of speech more narrowly than we now think 
of  it,  see  Bork,  Neutral  Principles  and  Some  First  Amend­
ment  Problems,  47  Ind.  L.  J.  1,  22  (1971),  but  also  because 
they held very different views about the nature of the First 
Amendment  right  and  the  role  of  corporations  in  society. 
Those  few  corporations  that  existed  at  the  founding  were 
authorized  by  grant  of  a  special  legislative  charter.53  Cor­
porate sponsors would petition the legislature, and the legis­
lature,  if  amenable,  would  issue  a  charter  that  speciﬁed  the 
corporation’s powers and purposes and “authoritatively ﬁxed 

53 Scholars have found that only a handful of business corporations were 
issued charters during the colonial period, and only a few hundred during 
all  of  the  18th  century.  See  E.  Dodd,  American  Business  Corporations 
Until  1860,  p.  197  (1954);  L.  Friedman,  A  History  of  American  Law  188– 
189 (2d ed. 1985); Baldwin, American Business Corporations Before 1789, 8 
Am. Hist. Rev. 449, 450–459 (1903).  Justice Scalia quibbles with these 
ﬁgures;  whereas  we  say  that  “a  few  hundred”  charters  were  issued  to 
business corporations during the 18th century, he says that the number is 
(concurring  opinion).  Justice 
“approximately  335.”  Ante,  at  387 
Scalia  also  raises  the  more  serious  point  that  it  is  improper  to  assess 
these  ﬁgures  by  today’s  standards,  ibid.,  though  I  believe  he  fails  to  sub­
stantiate his claim that “the corporation was a familiar ﬁgure in American 
economic  life”  by  the  century’s  end,  ibid.  (internal  quotation  marks  omit­
ted).  His  formulation  of  that  claim  is  also  misleading,  because  the  rele­
vant  reference  point  is  not  1800  but  the  date  of  the  First  Amendment’s 
ratiﬁcation,  in  1791.  And  at  that  time,  the  number  of  business  charters 
must have been signiﬁcantly smaller than 335, because the pace of charter­
ing  only  began  to  pick  up  steam  in  the  last  decade  of  the  18th  century. 
More  than  half  of  the  century’s  total  business  charters  were  issued  be­
tween 1796 and 1800.  Friedman, History of American Law, at 189.