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Corporate Piety And Impropriety: Hobby Lobby's Extension Of Rfra Rights To For-Profit Corporations, Amy Sepinwall
Corporate Piety And Impropriety: Hobby Lobby's Extension Of Rfra Rights To For-Profit Corporations, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court held, for the first time, that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to for-profit corporations and, on that basis, it allowed Hobby Lobby to omit otherwise mandated contraceptive coverage from its employee healthcare package. Critics argue that the Court’s novel expansion of corporate rights is fundamentally inconsistent with the basic principles of corporate law. In particular, they contend that the decision ignores the fact that the corporation, as an artificial entity, cannot exercise religion in its own right, and they decry the notion that the law might look through the corporate …
Conscience And Complicity: Assessing Pleas For Religious Exemptions After Hobby Lobby, Amy Sepinwall
Conscience And Complicity: Assessing Pleas For Religious Exemptions After Hobby Lobby, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
In the paradigmatic case of conscientious objection, the objector claims that his religion forbids him from actively participating in a wrong (e.g., by fighting in a war). In the religious challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, on the other hand, employers claim that their religious convictions forbid them from merely subsidizing insurance through which their employees might commit a wrong (e.g., by using contraception). The understanding of complicity underpinning these challenges is vastly more expansive than what standard legal doctrine or moral theory contemplates. Courts routinely reject claims of conscientious objection to taxes that fund military initiatives, or …
Citizens United And The Ineluctable Question Of Corporate Citizenship, Amy Sepinwall
Citizens United And The Ineluctable Question Of Corporate Citizenship, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, corporations and individuals now enjoy the same rights to spend money on ads supporting or opposing candidates for office. Those concerned about the role of money in politics have much to decry about the decision. But the threat to democracy posed by allowing wealthy corporations to function as political speakers arises as well under a regime that allows wealthy individuals to do so. If we are not prepared to limit individuals’ expenditures on political speech, we will have to find a way to distinguish individuals’ and corporations’ free speech …
Responsibility For Historical Injustices: Reconceiving The Case For Reparations, Amy J. Sepinwall
Responsibility For Historical Injustices: Reconceiving The Case For Reparations, Amy J. Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
Two opposing conceptions of responsibility animate the debate about reparations for slavery. Opponents of reparations espouse an individualist conception, and hold that one may be held responsible only for an action in which she participated directly, and only to the extent that her contribution caused harm. Since no contemporary citizen participated in slavery, opponents conclude that no contemporary citizen has a duty of repair. Supporters of reparations, or reparationists, adopt or develop theories of collective responsibility, according to which responsibility attaches to a group first and foremost, and then gets ascribed to the group's members derivatively. Reparationists thus argue that, …