In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court granted corporations a First Amendment right to expend unlimited resources to influence political campaigns. In doing that, it ignored who actually talks when corporations speak, and it overlooked two other sets of free speech rights worthy of protection: corporate shareholders and citizens.
Who is the corporation for the purposes of political speech? Business law 101 states that, when lawyers represent corporations, the corporation — ultimately the shareholders — is the client. But shareholders do not have real control over corporations. In 1936, Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means penned The Modern Corporation and Private Property, describing the disconnect between ownership and management of corporations.
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