11-08-2009, 03:13 PM
Doc wrote:
"Commercial free speech" is not "corporate free speech."
Corporations do not have constitutional rights and privileges. What rights they have in the federal courts come by way of Articles I-III, granted via legislative or executive law or by judicial interpretation.
The reading I have been doing seems to indicate that though the Supreme Court has not held that corporations have all the the rights enjoyed by individuals under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has held that corporations do have some rights. In LORILLARD TOBACCO CO. v. REILLY the court said, "For over 25 years, the Court has recognized that commercial speech does not fall outside the purview of the First Amendment. Instead, the Court has afforded commercial speech a measure of First Amendment protection “ ‘commensurate’ ” with its position in relation to other constitutionally guaranteed expression." So, though, this ruling is limited to a question of commercial speech it seems quite clear that the Court was ruling that certain commercial speech has Constitutional protection under the First Amendment. And in the Harvard Law School link I provided in the later post, there is this:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/200...ate-power/
What is relatively new, however, is the claim that business entities have a constitutional right to utilize their economic power to participate in political campaigns and influence the outcome of public votes free of meaningful public regulation. The idea can be traced to the 1978 case of First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, where a 5 to 4 majority of the Court [1] voided a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporations from expending funds in connection with state referenda having nothing to do with their business on the ground it was an unconstitutional interference with corporate freedom of speech. In brief, Bellotti stands for the principle that corporations may spend money to influence the outcome of a public referendum regardless of whether the issue relates to the corporation’s business interests.
It sure seems that this is saying that the Supreme Court has ruled to extend constitutional protection to corporate speech even beyond commercial speech - in Boston v. Bellotti ruling that corporations have constitutional protection of their free speech rights to expend funds on an issue that has nothing to do with the corporation's business.
These and the other resources I've read certainly seem to me to be saying that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations do have some Constitutionally protected rights. I haven't seen a source that suggests otherwise - though I have run into several that argue that corporations should not have ever been afforded any Constitutional protections (a sentiment with which I agree). So I'm sorry but I'm mystified as to why you say that corporations do not have Constitutional rights. Could you provide some links that I could read to understand the basis for your claim?