First Amendment, Inc.

In the case just argued in the Supreme Court involving a corporate-sponsored film attacking Hillary Clinton, the issue is whether a corporation enjoys the right of free speech. The argument that it does have such a right is based on the concept that the corporation is a "person," which it clearly is not. This absurd concept found its way into the law with the 1886 Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. Since then, corporations have tried to expand the reasonable point that corporations should have some rights enjoyed by an individual--to sue and be sued, for example--to justify rights like a corporate right to freedom of speech that make no sense at all. A constitutional scholar, Garrett Epps, who attended the recent Supreme Court hearings, tells me that John Roberts and Antonin Scalia actually seemed to feel that the corporation enjoys more rights than the individual.

Charles Peters is the founding editor of the Washington Monthly.