User:Marreif4/sandbox

Subsequent Developments
Referred to by Linda Greenhouse as the most important Supreme Court case no one's ever heard of, there was not a very strong reaction from the media and the public following the decision. Most of the discourse pertaining to the case today is how the ruling has resulted in thinking about corporations as having the same [First Amendment to the United States Constitution|first amendment] rights as individual citizens, and how this is a negative thing for politics today.

Support
Those who supported the decision saw it as a culmination of constitutional thinking. From this decision, two main outcomes were praised by scholars and lawyers, one, the increase in information surrounding an election and two, the treatment of corporate speech the same as individual speech. For both of these outcomes, there were many cases prior that justified this decision. Early Supreme Court attitudes were that corporations did not deserve any protection under the first amendment, but by 1970, some lower courts were beginning to recognize first amendment protection to "corporate speech" Prentice shows how first amendment protection for corporations has worked its way into decisions of the court and legislature since the 1940's, referencing cases such as Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942), Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations (1973) and Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council (1976) and stating: "with but two exceptions, the Burger Court has invalidated every commercial speech ban considered since 1973. Prentice justifies the decisions of the court through evidence from past rulings, and from the idea of the "right to receive" doctrine that brings to mind that the right to receive information stems from the concept of freedom of communication that "the framers of the Constitution sought to embody in the first amendment"

The second topic focused on by supporters was the increase in discourse and discussion, and allow voters to hear what the corporate speakers had to say. Lawyer Francis H. Fox writes "it [the ruling] perceives that the first amendment's purposes are better served by allowing the untrammeled use of means of communication than by enacting legislation designed to foster equality of access to those means." The court placed more emphasis on the possibility of the speech that the corporate speakers had to offer, and gave as many rights to the listener as they did the speaker.

Criticisms
Most of the criticisms have to do with the influx of corporate money into elections, drowning out smaller voices and candidates. The power of corporate speech and the court's "problems in understanding social reality." are cited as negatives on the decision.

In First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the court ruled that overall, corporation's should receive the same amount of protection of free speech that individuals have. Academic George W. Scofield said, "however, a corporation should not be given speech protection in issues that do not affect the corporate property; once the property aspect is removed, the speech becomes the purely personal views of corporate management, undeserving of the constitutional protection afforded by Bellotti." Those who opposed the ruling felt that it would drown out the speech of smaller, less wealthy voices" As former Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia circuit J. Skelly Wright wrote, the rulings in both the First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti and Buckley v. Valeo cases have "given protection to the polluting effect of money in financial campaigns." Wright continues to harp on the idea of "one person, one vote", which aligns with Scofield's idea of the speech of a corporation and the speech of an individual being aligned.

Other criticisms of the ruling included the precedent set in both Belotti and the Citizens United these cases defining corporations and citizens has continued to influence rulings in favor of larger corporations, instead of against them. A key point is that it has become clear that commercial interests and public interests are not always aligned, and investment from corporations for commercial interests can be detrimental to the formation of public opinion. Linda Greenhouse said in an article in the New York Times, "the court’s speech-protective instincts appear increasingly to serve a deregulatory agenda." The precedent set by the the rulings in the First National Bank of Boston v. Belotti have influenced many cases, most notably the [Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission|Citizens United]] decision, and have led to the continued importance of corporate money in politics. Additionally, scholar Carl E. Schneider wrote in the Southern California Law Review about how the use of the court's opinion fit into previous opinions on the topic of "legislature attempting to govern the political and social power of the business corporation." Schneider writes about how the ruling of the court suffered because of their misinterpretation of the first amendment and their "problems in understanding social reality." The most vital piece of information here seems to be the influence on the amount of knowledge the public has, with more corporations involved in distributing information, more knowledge citizens will be permitted.