Opinion ID: 1741
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Original Understandings

Text: Let us start from the beginning. The Court invokes ancient First Amendment principles, ante, at 886 (internal quotation marks omitted), and original understandings, ante, at 906-907, to defend today's ruling, yet it makes only a perfunctory attempt to ground its analysis in the principles or understandings of those who drafted and ratified the Amendment. Perhaps this is because there is not a scintilla of evidence to support the notion that anyone believed it would preclude regulatory distinctions based on the corporate form. To the extent that the Framers' views are discernible and relevant to the disposition of this case, they would appear to cut strongly against the majority's position. This is not only because the Framers and their contemporaries conceived of speech more narrowly than we now think of it, see Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L.J. 1, 22 (1971), but also because they held very different views about the nature of the First Amendment right and the role of corporations in society. Those few corporations that existed at the founding were authorized by grant of a special legislative charter. [53] Corporate sponsors would petition the legislature, and the legislature, if amenable, would issue a charter that specified the corporation's powers and purposes and authoritatively fixed the scope and content of corporate organization, including the internal structure of the corporation. J. Hurst, The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States 1780-1970, pp. 15-16 (1970) (reprint 2004). Corporations were created, supervised, and conceptualized as quasi-public entities, designed to serve a social function for the state. Handlin & Handlin, Origin of the American Business Corporation, 5 J. Econ. Hist. 1, 22 (1945). It was assumed that [they] were legally privileged organizations that had to be closely scrutinized by the legislature because their purposes had to be made consistent with public welfare. R. Seavoy, Origins of the American Business Corporation, 1784-1855, p. 5 (1982). The individualized charter mode of incorporation reflected the cloud of disfavor under which corporations labored in the early years of this Nation. 1 W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Corporations § 2, p. 8 (rev. ed.2006); see also Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517, 548-549, 53 S.Ct. 481, 77 L.Ed. 929 (1933) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (discussing fears of the evils of business corporations); L. Friedman, A History of American Law 194 (2d ed.1985) (The word `soulless' constantly recurs in debates over corporations.... Corporations, it was feared, could concentrate the worst urges of whole groups of men). Thomas Jefferson famously fretted that corporations would subvert the Republic. [54] General incorporation statutes, and widespread acceptance of business corporations as socially useful actors, did not emerge until the 1800's. See Hansmann & Kraakman, The End of History for Corporate Law, 89 Geo. L.J. 439, 440 (2001) (hereinafter Hansmann & Kraakman) ([A]ll general business corporation statutes appear to date from well after 1800). The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind. [55] While individuals might join together to exercise their speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends. Even the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty, given that at the time, the legitimacy of every corporate activity was thought to rest entirely in a concession of the sovereign. Shelledy, Autonomy, Debate, and Corporate Speech, 18 Hastings Const. L.Q. 541, 578 (1991); cf. Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636, 4 L.Ed. 629 (1819) (Marshall, C.J.) (A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it); Eule, Promoting Speaker Diversity: Austin and Metro Broadcasting, 1990 S.Ct. Rev. 105, 129 (The framers of the First Amendment could scarcely have anticipated its application to the corporation form. That, of course, ought not to be dispositive. What is compelling, however, is an understanding of who was supposed to be the beneficiary of the free speech guarantythe individual). In light of these background practices and understandings, it seems to me implausible that the Framers believed the freedom of speech would extend equally to all corporate speakers, much less that it would preclude legislatures from taking limited measures to guard against corporate capture of elections. The Court observes that the Framers drew on diverse intellectual sources, communicated through newspapers, and aimed to provide greater freedom of speech than had existed in England. Ante, at 906. From these (accurate) observations, the Court concludes that [t]he First Amendment was certainly not understood to condone the suppression of political speech in society's most salient media. Ibid. This conclusion is far from certain, given that many historians believe the Framers were focused on prior restraints on publication and did not understand the First Amendment to prevent the subsequent punishment of such [publications] as may be deemed contrary to the public welfare. Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 714, 51 S.Ct. 625, 75 L.Ed. 1357 (1931). Yet, even if the majority's conclusion were correct, it would tell us only that the First Amendment was understood to protect political speech in certain media. It would tell us little about whether the Amendment was understood to protect general treasury electioneering expenditures by corporations, and to what extent. As a matter of original expectations, then, it seems absurd to think that the First Amendment prohibits legislatures from taking into account the corporate identity of a sponsor of electoral advocacy. As a matter of original meaning, it likewise seems baselessunless one evaluates the First Amendment's principles, ante, at 886, 912, or its purpose, ante, at 919-920 (opinion of ROBERTS, C.J.), at such a high level of generality that the historical understandings of the Amendment cease to be a meaningful constraint on the judicial task. This case sheds a revelatory light on the assumption of some that an impartial judge's application of an originalist methodology is likely to yield more determinate answers, or to play a more decisive role in the decisional process, than his or her views about sound policy. Justice SCALIA criticizes the foregoing discussion for failing to adduce statements from the founding era showing that corporations were understood to be excluded from the First Amendment's free speech guarantee. Ante, at 925-926, 929. Of course, Justice SCALIA adduces no statements to suggest the contrary proposition, or even to suggest that the contrary proposition better reflects the kind of right that the drafters and ratifiers of the Free Speech Clause thought they were enshrining. Although Justice SCALIA makes a perfectly sensible argument that an individual's right to speak entails a right to speak with others for a common cause, cf. MCFL, 479 U.S. 238, 107 S.Ct. 616, 93 L.Ed.2d 539, he does not explain why those two rights must be precisely identical, or why that principle applies to electioneering by corporations that serve no common cause. Ante, at 928. Nothing in his account dislodges my basic point that members of the founding generation held a cautious view of corporate power and a narrow view of corporate rights (not that they despised corporations, ante, at 925), and that they conceptualized speech in individualistic terms. If no prominent Framer bothered to articulate that corporate speech would have lesser status than individual speech, that may well be because the contrary propositionif not also the very notion of corporate speech was inconceivable. [56] Justice SCALIA also emphasizes the unqualified nature of the First Amendment text. Ante, at 925, 928-929. Yet he would seemingly read out the Free Press Clause: How else could he claim that my purported views on newspapers must track my views on corporations generally? Ante, at 927. [57] Like virtually all modern lawyers, Justice SCALIA presumably believes that the First Amendment restricts the Executive, even though its language refers to Congress alone. In any event, the text only leads us back to the questions who or what is guaranteed the freedom of speech, and, just as critically, what that freedom consists of and under what circumstances it may be limited. Justice SCALIA appears to believe that because corporations are created and utilized by individuals, it follows (as night the day) that their electioneering must be equally protected by the First Amendment and equally immunized from expenditure limits. See ante, at 928-929. That conclusion certainly does not follow as a logical matter, and Justice SCALIA fails to explain why the original public meaning leads it to follow as a matter of interpretation. The truth is we cannot be certain how a law such as BCRA § 203 meshes with the original meaning of the First Amendment. [58] I have given several reasons why I believe the Constitution would have been understood then, and ought to be understood now, to permit reasonable restrictions on corporate electioneering, and I will give many more reasons in the pages to come. The Court enlists the Framers in its defense without seriously grappling with their understandings of corporations or the free speech right, or with the republican principles that underlay those understandings. In fairness, our campaign finance jurisprudence has never attended very closely to the views of the Framers, see Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230, 280, 126 S.Ct. 2479, 165 L.Ed.2d 482 (2006) (STEVENS, J., dissenting), whose political universe differed profoundly from that of today. We have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment, and many legal scholars have long since rejected the concession theory of the corporation. But historical context is usually relevant, ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted), and in light of the Court's effort to cast itself as guardian of ancient values, it pays to remember that nothing in our constitutional history dictates today's outcome. To the contrary, this history helps illuminate just how extraordinarily dissonant the decision is.