Comment by osiris88

I don’t disagree with you but I disagree on a point of history.

> Without the protections the Americans tried to shove into the First Amendment (which did not include anything about corporations at the time, as they did not exist) being enshrined into law

If I recall correctly, Britain had joint stock companies from the 1600s, and Adam Smith and all that. They also even before this had “trusts” and “trusts which own trusts” which had certain rights, and the court of chancery had established precedent around these.

The French also had a massive state stock company in this time, and it became a massive bubble which imploded in XXXX. This attracted a lot of attention and commentary and it’s impossible that the American Founders were ignorant.

The Brit’s never had a freedom of speech, but in English common law, companies had property rights, standing to sue, and so on. Most activities a business person could take, they could take on behalf of their company instead.

So in the American context, it seems that the founders were likely aware of corporations. Why they didn’t put explicit limits in the first amendment, who knows. Maybe it just didn’t seem important at the time.