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Page Number: 547.0

386  CITIZENS  UNITED  v.  FEDERAL  ELECTION  COMM’N 

Scalia, J., concurring 

tempts  this  demonstration,  however,  in  splendid  isolation 
from the text of the First Amendment.  It never shows why 
“the  freedom  of  speech”  that  was  the  right  of  Englishmen 
did not include the freedom to speak in association with other 
individuals, including association in the corporate form.  To 
be sure, in 1791 (as now) corporations could pursue only the 
objectives  set  forth  in  their  charters;  but  the  dissent  pro­
vides  no  evidence  that  their  speech  in  the  pursuit  of  those 
objectives could be censored. 

Instead  of  taking  this  straightforward  approach  to  deter­
mining the Amendment’s meaning, the dissent embarks on a 
detailed exploration of the Framers’ views about the “role of 
corporations in society.”  Post, at 426.  The Framers did not 
like corporations, the dissent concludes, and therefore it fol­
lows  (as  night  the  day)  that  corporations  had  no  rights  of 
free  speech.  Of  course  the  Framers’  personal  affection  or 
disaffection for corporations is relevant only insofar as it can 
be thought  to be reﬂected  in the understood meaning  of the 
text  they  enacted—not,  as  the  dissent  suggests,  as  a  free­
standing  substitute  for  that  text.  But  the  dissent’s  distor­
tion  of  proper  analysis  is  even  worse  than  that.  Though 
faced with a constitutional text that makes no distinction be­
tween  types  of  speakers,  the  dissent  feels  no  necessity  to 
provide even an isolated statement from the founding era to 
the  effect  that  corporations  are  not  covered,  but  places  the 
burden  on  appellant  to  bring  forward  statements  showing 
that  they  are.  Ibid.  (“[T]here  is  not  a  scintilla  of  evidence 
to support the notion that anyone believed [the First Amend­
ment]  would  preclude  regulatory  distinctions  based  on  the 
corporate form”). 

Despite  the  corporation-hating  quotations  the  dissent  has 
dredged  up,  it  is  far  from  clear  that  by  the  end  of  the  18th 
century  corporations  were  despised.  If  so,  how  came  there 
to be  so many of  them?  The dissent’s statement  that there 
were  few  business  corporations  during  the  18th  century— 
“only a few hundred during all of the 18th century”—is mis­