Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 552

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

391 

Scalia, J., concurring 

In passing, the dissent also claims that the Court’s concep­
tion of corruption is unhistorical.  The Framers “would have 
been appalled,”  it says,  by the evidence  of corruption  in the 
congressional  ﬁndings  supporting  the  Bipartisan  Campaign 
Reform  Act  of  2002.  Post,  at  451–452.  For  this  proposi­
tion, the dissent cites a law-review article arguing that “cor­
ruption” was originally understood to include “moral decay” 
and  even  actions  taken  by  citizens  in  pursuit  of  private 
rather  than  public  ends.  Teachout,  The  Anti-Corruption 
Principle, 94 Cornell L. Rev. 341, 373, 378 (2009).  It is hard 
to see how this has anything to do with what sort of corrup­
tion  can  be  combated  by  restrictions  on  political  speech. 
Moreover,  if  speech  can  be  prohibited  because,  in  the  view 
of  the  Government,  it  leads  to  “moral  decay”  or  does  not 
serve  “public  ends,”  then  there  is  no  limit  to  the  Govern­
ment’s censorship power. 

The  dissent  says  that  when  the  Framers  “constitutional­
ized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was 
the  free  speech  of  individual  Americans  that  they  had  in 
mind.”  Post, at 428.  That is no doubt true.  All the provi­
sions  of  the  Bill  of  Rights  set  forth  the  rights  of  individual 

press” to mean, not everyone’s right to speak or publish, but rather every­
one’s  right  to  speak  or  the  institutional  press’s  right  to  publish.  No  one 
thought  that  is  what  it  meant.  Patriot  Noah  Webster’s  1828  dictionary 
contains, under the word “press,” the following entry: 

“Liberty of the press, in civil policy, is the free right of publishing books, 
pamphlets or papers without previous restraint; or the unrestrained right 
which every citizen enjoys of publishing his thoughts and opinions, subject 
only  to  punishment  for  publishing  what  is  pernicious  to  morals  or  to  the 
peace  of  the  state.”  2  American  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language 
(1828) (reprinted 1970). 

As the Court’s opinion describes, ante, at 352, our jurisprudence agrees 

with Noah Webster and contradicts the dissent. 

“The liberty of the press is not conﬁned to newspapers and periodicals. 
It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaﬂets. . . . The press in its histori­
cal connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a ve­
hicle of information and opinion.”  Lovell v.  City of Grifﬁn, 303 U. S. 444, 
452 (1938).