Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 550

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

389 

Scalia, J., concurring 

I have discussed, the practice of incorporation only expanded 
in the United States.  Both corporations and voluntary asso­
ciations  actively  petitioned  the  Government  and  expressed 
their views in newspapers and pamphlets.  For example: An 
antislavery  Quaker  corporation  petitioned  the  First  Con­
gress, distributed pamphlets, and communicated through the 
press  in  1790.  W.  diGiacomantonio,  “For  the  Gratiﬁcation 
of  a Volunteering  Society”: Antislavery  and Pressure  Group 
Politics  in  the  First  Federal  Congress,  15  J.  Early  Republic 
169  (1995).  The  New  York  Sons  of  Liberty  sent  a  circu­
lar  to  Colonies  farther  south  in  1766.  P.  Maier,  From  Re­
sistance  to  Revolution  79–80  (1972).  And  the  Society  for 
the  Relief  and  Instruction  of  Poor  Germans  circulated  a 
biweekly  paper  from  1755  to  1757.  Adams,  The  Colonial 
German-language  Press  and  the  American  Revolution,  in 
The  Press  &  the  American  Revolution  151,  161–162  (B.  Bai­
lyn & J. Hench eds. 1980).  The dissent offers no evidence— 
none  whatever—that  the  First  Amendment’s  unqualiﬁed 
text was originally understood to exclude such associational 
speech from its protection.5 

5 The  best  the  dissent  can  come  up  with  is  that  “[p]ostratiﬁcation  prac­
tice”  supports  its  reading  of  the  First  Amendment.  Post,  at  431,  n.  56. 
For  this  proposition,  the  dissent  cites  Justice  White’s  statement  (in  dis­
sent) that “[t]he common law was generally interpreted as prohibiting cor­
porate  political  participation,”  First  Nat.  Bank  of  Boston  v.  Bellotti,  435 
U. S. 765, 819 (1978).  The sole authority Justice White cited for this prop­
osition,  id.,  at  819,  n.  14,  was  a  law-review  note  that  made  no  such  claim. 
To  the  contrary,  it  stated  that  the  cases  dealing  with  the  propriety  of 
corporate  political  expenditures  were  “few.”  Note,  Corporate  Political 
Affairs Programs, 70 Yale L. J. 821, 852 (1961).  More speciﬁcally, the note 
cites only two holdings to that effect, one by a Federal District Court, and 
one  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  Montana.  Ibid.,  n.  197.  Of  course  even  if 
the common law was “generally interpreted” to prohibit corporate political 
expenditures  as  ultra  vires,  that  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  whether 
political  expenditures  that  were  authorized  by  a  corporation’s  charter 
could constitutionally be suppressed. 

As  additional  “[p]ostratiﬁcation  practice,”  the  dissent  notes  that  the 
Court  “did  not  recognize  any  First  Amendment  protections  for  corpora­