Cite as: 558 U. S. ____ (2010) 35 Opinion of STEVENS, J. believed it would preclude regulatory distinctions based on the corporate form. To the extent that the Framers’ views are discernible and relevant to the disposition of this case, they would appear to cut strongly against the majority’s position. This is not only because the Framers and their contem­ poraries conceived of speech more narrowly than we now think of it, see Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L. J. 1, 22 (1971), but also because they held very different views about the nature of the First Amendment right and the role of corporations in society. Those few corporations that existed at the found­ ing were authorized by grant of a special legislative char­ ter.53 Corporate sponsors would petition the legislature, and the legislature, if amenable, would issue a charter that specified the corporation’s powers and purposes and “authoritatively fixed the scope and content of corporate organization,” including “the internal structure of the —————— 53 Scholars have found that only a handful of business corporations were issued charters during the colonial period, and only a few hundred during all of the 18th century. See E. Dodd, American Business Corpo­ rations Until 1860, p. 197 (1954); L. Friedman, A History of American Law 188–189 (2d ed. 1985); Baldwin, American Business Corporations Before 1789, 8 Am. Hist. Rev. 449, 450–459 (1903). JUSTICE SCALIA quibbles with these figures; whereas we say that “a few hundred” charters were issued to business corporations during the 18th century, he says that the number is “approximately 335.” Ante, at 2 (concurring opinion). JUSTICE SCALIA also raises the more serious point that it is improper to assess these figures by today’s standards, ante, at 3, though I believe he fails to substantiate his claim that “the corporation was a familiar figure in American economic life” by the century’s end, ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). His formulation of that claim is also misleading, because the relevant reference point is not 1800 but the date of the First Amendment’s ratification, in 1791. And at that time, the number of business charters must have been significantly smaller than 335, because the pace of chartering only began to pick up steam in the last decade of the 18th century. More than half of the century’s total business charters were issued between 1796 and 1800. Friedman, History of American Law, at 189.