Should Corporations Have Constitutional Rights?
Citizens United (2010) held that corporations have First Amendment rights to spend unlimited money in elections. Corporations now hold Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and due-process protections. Should artificial legal entities have constitutional rights designed for humans — or is corporate personhood a fiction that distorts democracy? Two debaters, opposing sides — you score who makes the stronger case.
Friday, September 18, 2026 · 7:00 PM EDT
What's at stake
Remove corporate personhood and Citizens United falls, political speech is restricted to humans, and corporations lose Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections. Keep it and some of the most powerful entities in American life hold rights their creators never intended.
The Matchup
The Positions
Corporations are associations of people. Denying them constitutional rights would allow government to suppress the political speech of unions, nonprofits, and media companies — many of which are corporations.
- The New York Times Company is a corporation. The NAACP is a nonprofit corporation. The Sierra Club, the NRA, the AFL-CIO are all incorporated entities. A constitutional regime that denies corporations First Amendment protection empowers government to silence these organizations. Citizens United was not just about corporate money; it was about whether the government could ban a film critical of Hillary Clinton. The answer — no — is correct.
- Constitutional protections for corporations run deeper than Citizens United. The Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless search of corporate premises protects trade secrets and employee privacy. The Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination protects corporate records. Stripping these protections would give the government sweeping investigative power over businesses — a tool with obvious potential for abuse against political opponents.
- The legal concept of corporate personhood predates Citizens United by 200 years and underpins contract law, property law, and the ability to sue and be sued. Corporations as legal persons can be held liable for wrongdoing, enter binding agreements, and own property — all of which is essential to a functioning market economy. The question is not whether corporations should have legal personhood, but which constitutional rights should attach — a question of line-drawing, not abolition.
Debater: To be announced
Corporate constitutional rights allow the wealthiest entities on earth to use legal fictions to override democratic majorities. They were created by courts, not the Constitution, and can be eliminated by legislation.
- Citizens United unleashed unlimited corporate political spending: super PACs spent $2.9 billion in the 2022 midterms, with a significant portion from undisclosed corporate sources. The evidence that this spending shapes policy — not just elections — is strong. Corporate donors to both parties have achieved favorable regulatory treatment, tax provisions, and trade rules. Constitutional protection for this spending is not protecting speech; it is protecting the power to buy outcomes.
- The original constitutional text nowhere mentions corporations. The doctrine of corporate constitutional personhood derives from a 19th-century judicial innovation — a headnote added by a court reporter to an 1886 Supreme Court case that did not actually decide the question. Congress has the power, and the constitutional basis, to limit corporate electoral spending and corporate constitutional protections through statute, as most democratic countries have already done.
- Corporate constitutional rights create a systemic asymmetry: corporations can assert constitutional rights that their human members cannot waive. A shareholder who disagrees with a corporation's political spending cannot opt out — their capital funds speech they may oppose. The result is that corporations are treated as speakers with rights, but without the individual moral agency that justifies constitutional protection in the first place.
Debater: To be announced
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“The New York Times Company is a corporation. The NAACP is a nonprofit corporation. The Sierra Club, the NRA, the AFL-CIO are all incorporated entities. A constitutional regime that denies corporations First Amendment protection empowers government to silence these organizations. Citizens United was not just about corporate money; it was about whether the government could ban a film critical of Hillary Clinton. The answer — no — is correct.”
“Constitutional protections for corporations run deeper than Citizens United. The Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless search of corporate premises protects trade secrets and employee privacy. The Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination protects corporate records. Stripping these protections would give the government sweeping investigative power over businesses — a tool with obvious potential for abuse against political opponents.”
“Citizens United unleashed unlimited corporate political spending: super PACs spent $2.9 billion in the 2022 midterms, with a significant portion from undisclosed corporate sources. The evidence that this spending shapes policy — not just elections — is strong. Corporate donors to both parties have achieved favorable regulatory treatment, tax provisions, and trade rules. Constitutional protection for this spending is not protecting speech; it is protecting the power to buy outcomes.”
“The original constitutional text nowhere mentions corporations. The doctrine of corporate constitutional personhood derives from a 19th-century judicial innovation — a headnote added by a court reporter to an 1886 Supreme Court case that did not actually decide the question. Congress has the power, and the constitutional basis, to limit corporate electoral spending and corporate constitutional protections through statute, as most democratic countries have already done.”
How It Works
The Format
Standard SuperDebate: two people, cross-examination, moderated from start to finish
Opening Argument
PRO · opening case
Cross-Examination
CON questions PRO
Opening Argument
CON · opening case
Cross-Examination
PRO questions CON
Rebuttal
PRO
Rebuttal
CON
Closing Statement
PRO · final case
Closing Statement
CON · final case
Audience Vote
You pick the winner
~28 minutes of debate · audience vote follows closing statements
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