Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 634.0

Cite as: 558 U. S. 310 (2010) 

473 

Opinion of Stevens, J. 

None  of  this  is  to  suggest that  corporations  can  or  should 
be denied an opportunity to participate in election campaigns 
or  in  any  other  public  forum  (much  less  that  a  work  of  art 
such  as  Mr.  Smith  Goes  to  Washington  may  be  banned),  or 
to  deny  that  some  corporate  speech  may  contribute  signiﬁ­
cantly  to  public  debate.  What  it  shows,  however,  is  that 
Austin’s “concern about corporate domination of the political 
process,” id., at 659, reﬂects more  than a concern to protect 
governmental interests outside of the First Amendment.  It 
also reﬂects a concern to facilitate First Amendment values 
by  preserving  some  breathing  room  around  the  electoral 
“marketplace”  of  ideas,  ante,  at  335,  350,  354,  367,  369,  the 
marketplace in which the actual people of this Nation deter­
mine how they will govern themselves.  The majority seems 
oblivious  to  the  simple  truth  that  laws  such  as  § 203  do  not 
merely  pit  the  anticorruption  interest  against  the  First 
Amendment,  but  also  pit  competing  First  Amendment  val­
ues  against  each  other.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  serious  con­
cerns with any effort to balance the First Amendment rights 
of speakers against the First Amendment rights of listeners. 
But  when  the  speakers  in  question  are  not  real  people  and 
when  the  appeal  to  “First  Amendment  principles”  depends 
almost  entirely  on  the  listeners’  perspective,  ante,  at  319, 
363, it becomes necessary to consider how listeners will actu­
ally be affected. 

In  critiquing  Austin’s  antidistortion  rationale  and  cam­
paign ﬁnance regulation more generally, our colleagues place 
tremendous  weight  on  the  example  of  media  corporations. 
See ante, at 351–354, 361–362; ante, at 372–373, 382 (opinion 
of  Roberts, C.  J.);  ante, at  390  (opinion  of Scalia,  J.).  Yet 
it  is  not  at  all  clear  that  Austin  would  permit  § 203  to  be 
applied  to  them.  The  press  plays  a  unique  role  not  only  in 
the text, history, and structure of the First Amendment but 
also in  facilitating public  discourse; as  the Austin  Court ex­
plained,  “media  corporations  differ  signiﬁcantly  from  other 
corporations in that their resources are devoted to the collec­