Corporations as Persons Protected by Law

After Hobby Lobby, and as we read Citizens United, consider this statement from Prof. Paul Salamanca:

"If corporations don't have souls, why does a Google search for 'corporate greed' yield 1.85 million hits."

The Free Speech Clause would be largely meaningless if it did not protect corporate newspapers, publishers, television networks, filmmakers, and other corporations that print, speak, publish, transmit, and blog about politics, culture, and other matters of public concern.

And when we protect corporate speakers, the real beneficiaries are the individual persons who compose the willing audience for their speech. You and I are the real beneficiaries because we want to read, and listen to, and watch newspapers, books, movies, podcasts, and tweets published by the New York Times, and MSNBC, and Fox News, and Hollywood, and Citizens United.

When the NYT defends it's freedom of the press, it usually speaks about "the public's right to know." The right to receive speech, the right to read the NYT or to view the movie Hillary, is the real reason why we need to protect the First Amendment rights of corporations.