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Page Number: 551.0

390  CITIZENS  UNITED  v.  FEDERAL  ELECTION  COMM’N 

Scalia, J., concurring 

Historical evidence relating to the textually similar clause 
“the  freedom  of . . .  the  press”  also  provides  no  support  for 
the proposition  that the  First Amendment  excludes conduct 
of  artiﬁcial  legal  entities  from  the  scope  of  its  protection. 
The freedom of “the press” was widely understood to protect 
the  publishing  activities  of  individual  editors  and  printers. 
See  McIntyre  v.  Ohio  Elections  Comm’n,  514  U. S.  334,  360 
(1995) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment); see also McCon­
nell, 540 U. S., at 252–253 (opinion of Scalia, J.).  But these 
individuals  often  acted  through  newspapers,  which  (much 
like corporations) had their own names, outlived the individ­
uals  who  had  founded  them,  could  be  bought  and  sold,  were 
sometimes  owned  by  more  than  one  person,  and  were  oper­
ated  for  proﬁt.  See  generally  F.  Mott,  American  Journal­
ism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 
250  Years  3–164  (1941);  J.  Smith,  Freedom’s  Fetters  (1956). 
Their  activities  were  not  stripped  of  First  Amendment  pro­
tection simply because they were carried out under the ban­
ner  of  an  artiﬁcial  legal  entity.  And  the  notion  which  fol­
lows from the dissent’s view, that modern newspapers, since 
they  are  incorporated,  have  free-speech  rights  only  at  the 
sufferance of Congress, boggles the mind.6 

tions until the middle part of the 20th century.”  Post, at 431, n. 56.  But 
it did that in Grosjean v.  American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233 (1936), a case 
involving freedom of the press—which the dissent acknowledges did cover 
corporations  from  the  outset.  The  relative  recency  of  that  ﬁrst  case  is 
unsurprising.  All of our First Amendment jurisprudence was slow to de­
velop.  We did not consider application of the First Amendment to speech 
restrictions  other  than  prior  restraints  until  1919,  see  Schenck  v.  United 
States, 249 U. S. 47; we did not invalidate a state law on First Amendment 
grounds until  1931, see Stromberg v.  California, 283 U. S. 359,  and a fed­
eral law until 1965, see Lamont v.  Postmaster General, 381 U. S. 301. 

6 The  dissent  seeks  to  avoid  this  conclusion  (and  to  turn  a  liability  into 
an asset) by interpreting the Freedom of the Press Clause to refer to the 
institutional press  (thus demonstrating, according  to the dissent,  that the 
Founders  “did  draw  distinctions—explicit  distinctions—between  types  of 
‘speakers,’  or  speech  outlets  or  forms”).  Post,  at  431,  and  n.  57.  It  is 
passing  strange  to interpret  the  phrase  “the freedom  of  speech,  or of  the