Should Corporations Have First Amendment Rights

Abstract:     
Corporations are the wrong sort of thing to have speech rights. In contrast to the Supreme Court's free speech law, which focuses on the rights of listeners rather than the rights of speakers, I argue that the speaker makes a difference. For-profit business corporations best fulfill their role in our market democracy if they are controlled by a legally structured market, not when they expand their purview to include regulating their regulators.

Keywords: Freedom of speech, First Amendment, corporate speech, campaign finance, corporate governance

Accepted Paper Series