Fish ascribes to the Citizens United majority a deeply held principle-ism on the First Amendment that simply does not hold up to scrutiny. Not only is this fallacy exposed by Fish himself with his references to Justice Thomas' partial dissent on the issue of disclosure requirements, it is demonstrated by the Roberts Court decision in Morse v. Frederick, the Bongs Hits 4 Jesus case. The limits of "principle-ism" on the First Amendment are laid out fairly straight forwardly by Chief Justice Roberts:

The mode of analysis employed in Fraser is not entirely clear. The Court was plainly attuned to the content of Fraser’s speech, citing the “marked distinction between the political ‘message’ of the armbands in Tinker and the sexual content of [Fraser’s] speech.” Id., at 680. But the Court also reasoned that school boards have the authority to determine “what manner of speech in the classroom or in school assembly is inappropriate.” Id., at 683. Cf. id., at 689 (Brennan, J., concurring in judgment) (“In the present case, school officials sought only to ensure that a high school assembly proceed in an orderly manner. There is no suggestion that school officials attempted to regulate [Fraser’s] speech because they disagreed with the views he sought to express”).

We need not resolve this debate to decide this case. For present purposes, it is enough to distill from Fraser two basic principles. First, Fraser’s holding demonstrates that “the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings.” Id., at 682. [. . .] In school, [. . .] Fraser’s First Amendment rights were circumscribed “in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.” Tinker, supra, at 506.

Our most recent student speech case, Kuhlmeier, concerned “expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school.” 484 U. S., at 271. Staff members of a high school newspaper sued their school when it chose not to publish two of their articles. The Court of Appeals analyzed the case under Tinker, ruling in favor of the students because it found no evidence of material disruption to classwork or school discipline. 795 F. 2d 1368, 1375 (CA8 1986). This Court reversed, holding that “educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.” Kuhlmeier, supra, at 273.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is certainly not "principle-ism" regarding the First Amendment. I happen to agree with the formulations expressed by Roberts in the passage I quote (I disagreed with the application of those principles to the facts in that case.) My point is that when Fish describes the "doctrine" followed by the Citizens United majority he wrongly states that it is a consistent principle followed by that same majority (which was the Frederick majority.) Fish writes:

In other words, forget about what speech does or does not do in the world; just take care not to restrict it. This makes things relatively easy. All you have to do is determine that it’s speech and then protect it[.]

(Emphasis supplied.) As Frederick clearly demonstrates, that is not the principle consistently adhered to by the majority. It is, as it almost always is in judicial decision making, a principle adhered to support a desired result. In Citizens United, the majority wished to strike down the restrictions on independent corporate expenditures. To support that result, they waxed poetic on the virtues of the marketplace of ideas. In Frederick, the majority was not so interested in the virtues of the marketplace of ideas and was more interested in the desires of school administrators.

There are principles implicit in these judgments, but they are not really related to the First Amendment. Consider Justice Stevens arguments in both Frederick and Citizens United. In Frederick, Justice Stevens wrote:

In my judgment, the First Amendment protects student speech if the message itself neither violates a permissible rule nor expressly advocates conduct that is illegal and harmful to students. This nonsense banner does neither, and the Court does serious violence to the First Amendment in upholding—indeed, lauding—a school’s decision to punish Frederick for expressing a view with which it disagreed. [. . .]

Two cardinal First Amendment principles animate both the Court’s opinion in Tinker and Justice Harlan’s dissent. First, censorship based on the content of speech, particularly censorship that depends on the viewpointof the speaker, is subject to the most rigorous burden of justification:

“Discrimination against speech because of its message is presumed to be unconstitutional… . When the government targets not subject matter, but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant. Viewpoint discrimination is thus an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.” Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 828–829 (1995) (citation omitted).

Second, punishing someone for advocating illegal conduct is constitu