Lawrence Lessig: Citizens Unite: Via Huffington Post.

There has been a growing fury about the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case, but much of that fury hangs upon an odd reading of the Court's opinion. The Court, it is said, has given corporations all the rights of "persons." It has elevated these artificial beings into entities "endowed by their Creator" (us) "with certain unalienable rights," including the right to free speech.

No doubt the Court has a long history of recognizing the "person" in "Inc." But this current wave of criticism is hard to understand, because the Court's entire Citizens United opinion hung upon the fact that the First Amendment says nothing about who or what is to get the benefit of its protection. It simply bans certain kinds of regulation. As Justice Scalia put it in his concurrence: "The Amendment is written in terms of 'speech,' not speakers." Thus, the government is blocked by the First Amendment from constraining the free speech of any entity, whether that entity is a corporation or a dolphin.

This interpretation of the First Amendment is going to create real trouble for the Court when Congress gets around to closing the gap that the Court's opinion seems to create. If it is the regulation, and not the speaker that matters, then the Chinese are no different from the Chamber of Commerce. So how can the Court honestly uphold the inevitable law limiting the Chinese from campaigning, when they've just told us that identity doesn't matter?

One need not be xenophobic to be troubled by the idea of foreign influence in American elections. Certainly the Framers were. The point is not that foreigners are evil. It is rather that elections are private. It is we -- citizens -- who are to select who is to govern us. And it is completely appropriate for us to protect the debate we have about that selection by limiting disproportionate spending by non-citizens.

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