"..this is a legal premise that has existed for over a century. Otherwise, you couldn't sue a company for damages."<p>The way our particular laws have been written and interpreted by the Supreme Court, then yes, these things are indeed tied together. But there's no particular reason why one could not have a legal system with one and not the other.  That's the entire point of the OP.<p>Why exactly is unrestricted freedom of speech a necessary condition for corporate immunity? Assume you are building a constitution from scratch: Can you construct an argument for why you can't have corporate immunity without corporate freedom of speech, without referring to existing US case law?