This assumes that any speech or political contribution by a corporation is automatically assented to by everyone who is associated with the corporation. Ask the employees or shareholders of a large corporation how many of them agree with using the corporation's money for the campaign contributions it makes.

If people want to express their individual opinions, they can express them individually. If they want to express opinions as a large group, they can all sign the same letter or petition. Using company money to do things that only some of the company's owners or employees would assent to is not "free speech"; it's misuse of company money. That used to be called "embezzlement", not free speech.

The law can't favor free speech for some corporations/groups (New York Times, MSNBC, UAW, etc.) but not others (non-profit groups like Citizens United).

I agree with this; I don't see why the New York Times should get any special privileges because it's a "journalistic organization". But that just means everybody should have to abide by the same rules; it doesn't mean the rules should allow corporations to do things with company money that many if not most of their employees and shareholders would not agree with, just because those things happen to be "speech".

But the New York Times and Citizens United are both corporate entities. Few would question the NYT's right to publish editorials that promote specific political opinions and candidates, correct? What can you say about the NYT that you can't say about CU?

If they want to express opinions as a large group, they can all sign the same letter or petition. Using company money to do things that only some of the company's owners or employees would assent to is not "free speech"; it's misuse of company money. That used to be called "embezzlement", not free speech.

Your argument has a trivial workaround, which would have been put into widespread practice if the Citizens United decision had gone the other way. Every corporation in America would have added a line to its charter similar to whatever line in the NYT charter causes it to be considered an editorial publisher. If necessary, a similar line would have been added to every employment agreement signed by every corporate employee upon being hired.

Actually, if anything, CU would be less open to the issue I'm raising, of corporate money being expended for purposes that many or most of its shareholders do not agree with. CU was organized for the express purpose of political speech; NYT and most corporations are not. And most corporations are not even organized for the express purpose of publishing speech in general, as NYT is. That means most corporations shouldn't be able to make the same kinds of assumptions about what speech their shareholders would assent to, that the NYT can.

Every corporation in America would have added a line to its charter similar to whatever line in the NYT charter causes it to be considered an editorial publisher. If necessary, a similar line would have been added to every employment agreement signed by every corporate employee upon being hired.

Yes, you're right, in a practical sense this is what would happen. But that just underscores how broken corporate governance is now. The legal fiction of a "corporation" is abused in all manner of ways. IMO it would be better to restrict what "corporations", particularly publicly traded ones, can do with corporate money, and how broad their charters can be. But that's really a legislative fix, not a judicial one.

True, but I don't see how to fix it without serious unintended consequences in other areas.

The idea that a corporation must be organized for an "express purpose," declared in advance, that will determine that corporation's rights relative to others, is troublesome to put it mildly. A government that enforces things like that WILL enforce things that you and I don't like as well.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. I'm not talking about suppressing corporations' political speech specifically. I'm talking generally about corporations not being able to use company money for purposes not agreed to by a majority of shareholders. A corporation like NYT (or CU, for that matter), which is organized specifically for the purpose of publishing speech, is in a different position in that regard from a corporation which is organized to sell people crop seeds.

The idea that a corporation must be organized for an "express purpose," declared in advance, that will determine that corporation's rights relative to others, is troublesome to put it mildly. A government that enforces things like that WILL enforce things that you and I don't like as well.

The government is what gives corporations their legal privileges in the first place. Without the government, a corporation is just a bunch of people. It's government that allows corporations to shield their shareholders and officers from personal liability, take advantage of tax deductions for business expenses, etc.

I should make clear, btw, that I am not advocating removing all the aspects of corporations as legal persons. There are a lot of aspects of that that are very useful; for example, allowing corporations to enter into contracts and other legal agreements. I just don't think that automatically means that corporations must have all the aspects of legal persons, which is the underlying assumption behind the claim that corporations somehow automatically have free speech and other rights simply because they're legal persons.

The idea that a group of people (organized as a church, club, corporation, partnership, union, political party, non-profit, etc.) can only 'speak' as a group by getting every 'member' to explicitly sign a document for each and every instance of 'speech' or expenditure of money is entirely unworkable.

But, as I posted in another response in this thread, the real fix for this is legislative, to change the laws governing corporations and nonprofits to fix the huge abuses of corporate governance that go on today.

First of all, "people" don't lose their rights when they organize as a corporation. They still, as individuals, have the same rights they had, as individuals, prior to forming the corporation.

Forming the corporation then creates a legal entity which has, and which passes on to them, certain additional privileges that individuals do not typically have. For example, they gain strong protection from personal liability.

And it has long been recognized that, in order for corporations to work and to be useful -- and they are certainly useful for some purposes -- the privileges extended to this legal entity must resemble, in some ways, the rights afforded to individual persons. For example, a corporation needs to be able to enter into contracts, a corporation needs to be able to file suit, etc.

The tricky question is: which specific set of privileges should be extended? In other words, what is the minimum we must do in order for the corporation to be useful?

And this is not idle when it comes to questions of speech. An argument can be made that granting corporations the "right" to engage in political speech grants no right at all -- rather, it rigidly constrains what the corporation can do, since now arguments can be made about whether support for this candidate or that ballot issue best fulfills the corporation's duty to its investors. Do you really want to have directors sued because they directed the corporation to "speak" for a candidate who later enacted regulations that reduced the value of the shareholders' investment, for example?

Articulating a clear line, which allows corporations to do what they need to do for business to work, but which doesn't go further than that, and which doesn't lead to absurdities like a corporation being forced to "speak" for a particular candidate in order to fulfill its duties, is hard.