Do you believe the framers contemplated corporations in the first Amendment right to speech? If so, do you have any citation or way to back that up?
Just to clarify, there are actually two distinct issues with campaign finance reform and corporations. The first is whether or not the First Amendment, particularly freedom of speech, applies to corporations. I clarified at the beginning your position that it did not, and I thought that makes for an interesting discussion, so that's what we're discussing.
The second issue is, even if corporations are covered by the First Amendment, whether monetary contributions equal speech. That is
not the issue we are addressing. So with that cleared up....
Here's my textualist answer to your question:
1) I do not know if the Framers
specifically considered corporations covered by the First Amendment or not. Corporations did exist at that time, but the Amendment doesn't mention them
one way or the other.
2) The First Amendment, unlike a great many others, is
not expressly limited to "the People". For example, the Second Amendment refers to the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms.
But rather than being phrased in terms of "the right of the
people" (which at least would be a basis for claiming it is limited to individuals), the First Amendment is simply a flat out prohibition on the kind of laws Congress may make. "
Congress shall make no law.....
The First Amendment does not contain an
exception that permits Congress to ignore the "make no law" prohibition if the target of the law is a corporation, partnership, association, or anything else. It is simply stated as a flat prohibition on what Congress may do, not as a right belonging to individuals.
You are trying to read an exception into the Amendment that is stated nowhere in it. So...do you have any citation to back
that up?
So, as a follow up to 1), if they didn't "specifically consider" corporations as being covered by the First Amendment, it was because it was a flat prohibition on Congress acting
period. They didn't need to "specifically consider"
anyone.
3) To the extent you are going to claim that the absence of corporations being mentioned in the First Amendment means that they have no
free speech rights, there is no textual justification for saying that media (or religious) corporations are any different. In other words, you are perfectly willing to read into the Amendment coverage for corporations, but only for
part of the Amendment. Even though the text of the Amendment itself draws no such distinction at all. You're just making it up.
So, what I really can't understand is how you can know that the Framers "contemplated" corporations when it came to the press, but didn't "contemplate" them when in comes to speech. It's really odd. If they intended it to apply to one but not the other, why wouldn't they have mentioned it?
And here's that Textualist answer supplemented by some Originalism:
If you consider the text of the First Amendment to be
ambiguous in terms of whether or not it covers corporations, then you'd try to discenr the original understanding of Freedom of Speech, and why/how it was valued and understood at the time. And if you do that, you can find all
sorts of contemporaneous writings regarding the value of the free exchange of ideas. In other words,
the Framers and those who ratified the Constitution believed that freedom of speech was a right that was of value not only to the individual speaking, but to society as a whole. Free society benefits when more ideas are heard, regardless of the source.
Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that, under the
original understanding of the Constitution, Framers/ratifiers
would have believed that an attempt by Congress to suppress the publication of a political pamphlet by a for-profit corporation violated the First Amendment.
At least, that's how I see it.