Law Commons^™

Disaggregating Corpus Christi: The Illiberal Implications Of Hobby Lobby's Right To Free Exercise, Katharine Jackson

Katharine Jackson

This paper first examines and critiques the group rights to religious exercise derived from the three ontologies of the corporation suggested by different legal conceptions of corporate personhood often invoked by Courts. Finding the implicated groups rights inimical to individual religious freedom, the paper then presents an argument as to why a discourse of intra-corporate toleration and voluntariness does a better job at protecting religious liberty.

Dissecting Hobby Lobby'S Corporate Person: A Procedural Proposal For Aligning Corporate Rights And Responsibilities, Andrew J. Fleming

Brooklyn Law Review

Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court’s corporate personhood decisions have allowed for the corporation to become increasingly more “person-like” by recognizing corporate constitutional rights that were previously reserved for flesh-and-blood human beings. Yet in cases where the rights of corporations are evaluated, the Court’s analysis flows from an axiomatic conceptualization of the corporation as a static, theoretical being, as if plucked straight from a business organizations law school textbook. The result is a gulf between corporate rights as “persons” and corporate legal responsibilities. Nowhere is that gulf more evident than in the Court’s personal jurisdiction jurisprudence. In particular, this …

Making Corporate Law More Communitarian: A Proposed Response To The Roberts Court's Personification Of Corporations, Robert M. Ackerman, Lance Cole

Brooklyn Law Review

Both Citizens United and Hobby Lobby are notable for the Roberts Court’s personification of the corporation. In Citizens United, the United States Supreme Court expanded corporate speech rights in a political context; in Hobby Lobby, it accorded religious rights to corporations in an unprecedented manner. This article explains how the Court’s expansion of corporate personification has ignored both traditional corporate law doctrine regarding shareholder primacy and the fundamental distinction in corporate law between the corporate entity and the shareholders who control it.

The article takes a communitarian approach to corporate law analysis, recognizing that corporations play useful roles …

The Rise Of Corporate Religious Liberty, Micah Schwartzman, Chad Flanders, Zoe Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Introduction to our edited book, The Rise of Corporate Religious Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2016), offers an account of the “corporate turn” in law and religion. Here the term “corporate” refers to any organized body of people - groups, associations, organizations, and institutions - and, more specifically, to for-profit corporations. Our contention is that the relationship between law and religion has shifted dramatically in the last decade, moving from a conception of religious freedom focused mainly on individual liberty toward one that privileges the rights of religious organizations. We trace this development in two stages, describing the initial movement …

Corporate Law And Theory In Hobby Lobby, Elizabeth Pollman

All Faculty Scholarship

Does a business corporation constitute a “person” that can “exercise religion” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993? In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the Supreme Court answered this novel question in the affirmative, but this chapter shows that its anemic treatment of corporate law and theory provided little guidance on how to implement and limit the landmark ruling. This chapter critically examines the issues of corporate law and theory driving the Court’s analysis: (1) the theory of the corporation as a right holder; (2) corporate purpose; (3) the “closely held” category; and (4) state corporate law as …

Constitutionalizing Corporate Law, Elizabeth Pollman

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has recently decided some of the most important and controversial cases involving the federal rights of corporations in over two hundred years of jurisprudence. In rulings ranging from corporate political spending to religious liberty rights, the Court has dramatically expanded the zone in which corporations can act free from regulation. This Article argues these decisions represent a doctrinal shift, even from previous cases granting rights to corporations. The modern corporate rights doctrine has put unprecedented weight on state corporate law to act as a mechanism for resolving disputes among corporate participants regarding the expressive and religious activity …