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Business As Usual: Hobby Lobby And The Purpose Of Corporate Rights, Dalia Tsuk Mitchell

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article explores the interdependence of the discourse of corporate rights and the law of corporate purpose. I argue that the history of corporate rights reflects changing reactions of the U.S. Supreme Court to social, political, and cultural concerns, each reaction offering a different purpose for corporations in our modern society. At the turn of the twentieth century, in response to fears about the advance of socialism, the Court used liberal assumptions to justify protecting the publicly held corporation’s property rights as derived from the rights of individual shareholders. In so doing, the Court helped turn the corporation, with its …