The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its iteration…of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corporation.  While that glittering generality has rhetorical appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law.  Nor does it tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering that some of its shareholders may oppose…

Although they make enormous contributions to our society they (corporations) are not actually members of it.  They cannot vote or run for office.  Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects from the interests of eligible voters.  The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process.  Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potential deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.

The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past.  Congress has placed special limitations on spending by corporations ever since the Tillman Act in 1907.  We have unanimously concluded that this “reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process.  FEC v. National Right to Work Comm. 459 US 197, 209 (1982) and have accepted the legislative judgment that the special characteristics of corporate structure require particularly careful regulation. id at 209-210…  (Stevens then cites six cases the majority either disavowed or overruled and notes that the majority was ignoring over a century of history).

The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of institutions across this Nation.  The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution…

(Stevens then notes that the Court took the unusual step of ignoring the questions presented, invented its own questions, need not have reached this broad decision to decide the case and should have stayed within its normal process of avoiding facial challenges to statutes where possible and leaving statutes intact where possible.  He argues that the Court has “manufactured a facial challenge”).

(Stevens then agrues that the Court should have respected precedent as it is supposed to do, except in extraordinary circumstances).

Like all other natural persons, every shareholder of every corporation remains entirely free under Austin and McConnell to do however much electioneering she pleases outside the corporate form.   (Stevens also noted that the laws left open plenty of options for corporate speech).

The government routinely places special restrictions on the speech rights of students, prisoners, members of the Armed Forces, foreigners and its own employees.  When…restrictions on speech are justified by a legitimate governmental interest, they do not necessarily raise constitutional problems. (p.29)

(Stevens points out that the Framers of the Constitution had a narrower vision of the First Amendment than we do now and much greater restrictions on corporations, which they did not see as having personhood or rights.  Corporate sponsors would petition the legislature, which could grant a charter for a specific time, structure and duty).

Corporations were created, supervised, and conceptualized as quasi-public entities ‘designed to serve a social function for the state.’  It was ‘assumed that they were legally privileged organizations that had to be closely scrutinized by the legislature because their purposes had to be made consistent with the public welfare. (p.36)

The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare.  Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings and when they constitutionalized the right of free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans they had in mind.  While individuals might join together to exercise their free speech rights, business corporations, at least, were plainly not seen as facilitating such associational or expressive ends.  Even ‘the notion that business corporations could invoke the First Amendment would probably have been quite a novelty’. (p.37)

(Stevens concedes that corporations are covered by the First Amendment, but his argument is that it is obvious that there is a legitimate governmental interest and that corporate speech and individual speech can and always have been distinguished.  He further points out the two justifications for upholding the Tillman Act and other campaign finance laws: 1.  corporate power and the potential and appearance of corruption of public officials, 2. shareholder rights to prevent the use of their money to support candidates they oppose.  A corporation electioneering with funds out of its general treasury raises serious concerns about the second issue.  Stevens then cites several instances in US law where we take measures to prevent the voices of a few from drowning out those of the many.  Stevens also states that the Court has held that preventing or diminishing political corruption is a compelling state interest). (p.51)

(Stevens covers the Court’s long history of upholding limits on campaign spending to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption extensively from p.51 through p.70. This is integral to a functioning democracy).

Within the realm of campaign spending generally, corporate spending is the furthest from the core of political expression.  (citation & quotations omitted) (p.77)

(Stevens notes that PAC’s ensure that contributors support the goals of their contributors to influence the political process, whereas using general corporate funds for political activities does not protect shareholders, whose interests government may – and did- choose to protect). (p.86)

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.  (closing sentence – p.90)