Stanford University Press Blog

Religious Freedom in the Commercial Sphere

Are people organized as corporations entitled to constitutional rights?

by ILYA SOMIN

Hobby Lobby Store in Ohio. Creative Commons image via Wikimedia Commons.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby addressed a seemingly narrow issue: whether the Obamacare regulation requiring corporate employers to provide insurance plans that cover contraception violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in cases where the employers in question have religious objections to some or all contraceptives. But the Court’s ruling also makes a crucial broader point: that people are not required to give up fundamental legal rights when they organize themselves into a corporate body. That principle has important implications for constitutional law. It is a vital protection for individual rights in a society where we unavoidably conduct much of our business and charitable activities by using corporate organizations.

It is indeed true that corporations are not people. But those who own and operate them are.

RFRA was enacted in 1993 with overwhelming bipartisan support. It protects religious freedom by requiring the federal government to prove that laws that “substantially burden” the free exercise of religion are the least restrictive means to protecting a “compelling” government interest. The owners of Hobby Lobby Stores and other businesses involved in the case objected to being forced to provide insurance for some forms of contraception because they belong to the small minority of Americans who believe that some or all types of artificial contraception violate the dictates of their religion.

Constitutional Questions of 2014: A Blog Series

From Hobby Lobby to capital punishment—a reflection on this year's constitutional issues.

As the Supreme Court returns to the bench on Monday, the Stanford Press blog offers a brief retrospective on some of the defining constitutional questions of 2014, including commentary on such high profile cases as Hobby Lobby, McCutcheon, and Aereo, as well as a reflection on perhaps one of the biggest constitutional quandaries not to feature on the SCOTUS docket this year: the death penalty and its concomitant legacy of botched procedures. See the full lineup for this week’s series below.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
IN THE COMMERCIAL SPHERE
Are people organized as corporations entitled to constitutional rights?
by ILYA SOMIN
Tuesday

COPYRIGHT IN THE DIGITAL AGE
What do new cord-cutting technologies mean for copyright law? 
by JESSICA SILBEY
Wednesday

A NEW ERA IN POLITICAL EXCLUSION
In a democratic state, should wealth be permitted to amplify individuals’ political influence?
by TIM KUHNER
Thursday

BOTCHING THE 8th AMENDMENT
Does the death penalty inherently constitute “cruel and unusual” punishment?
by AUSTIN SARAT
Friday

Books As "Revolutionist" Incubators

On Jack London, banned books, and political agitation.

Jack London in 1903, public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

During his short career, Jack London achieved larger-than-life stature in American literature, and in the course of that short career he, like so many other writers of the Great-American-Novelist ilk, managed to produce a book that would be blacklisted, not only by American libraries and curricula, but also by a number of contemporary European dictatorships.

Preoccupied with the revolutionary flavor of much socialist thought at the time, multiple European regimes were wary of the influence of writers like London.

That book, The Call of the Wild, is inarguably London’s most famous work, which faced challenges in the United States largely as a result of its unflinching portrayal of animal cruelty, and its less-than-flattering depiction of a fictitious Native tribe. But abroad—in Italy, Yugoslavia, and Nazi Germany, where the book was met with yet fiercer opposition—the grounds for censorship and, in some cases outright book burning, hinged solely on London’s own socialist ideology. For even while explicitly socialist themes are hardly prominent features in The Call of the Wild, in London’s life and his other writings they loomed large. Preoccupied with the revolutionary flavor of much socialist thought at the time, multiple European regimes were wary of the influence of writers like London, and censoring his magnum opus was one means of curbing his influence as a social agitator.

Quiz: How Well Do You Know the Constitution?

Think you're a True American? Time to put your Benjamins where your mouth is.

Your Rugged Constitution tells us that the U.S. Constitution is like a "blueprint" for a "House of Freedom." How well acquainted are you with the architecture of the nation's founding document? Answer the following questions and then click the submit button to see how you scored. Best of luck fellow patriot!

Your Rugged Preamble

The nation’s founding document, as imagined by the midcentury American imagination.

In 1952, Stanford University Press published a guide for young American readers to aid them in their understanding of the United States Constitution. Now in reissue over 60 years later, the book not only serves its original purpose, as a concise resource on the history and purpose of the nation’s founding document, but it also offers a window into the patriotic imagination of the midcentury—a time characterized by communist fear-mongering and a prevailing sentiment of national exceptionalism (a retro 50s ethos, if you will).

Illustrated with equally retro 50s-style line drawings, the book considers each part of the Constitution in turn, elucidating passages and considering the Framers’ intent. To celebrate Constitution Day, we’ve excerpted a portion from Your Rugged Constitution below so that you (yes, you, fellow American!) can brush up on the nation’s famous Preamble.

The following is an excerpt from Your Rugged Constitution:

A Retro Reprint

A 50s-era guide to the American Constitution gets a new lease on life.

Over sixty years ago Stanford University Press published what quickly became a definitive (and lively) illustrated guide to the U.S. Constitution; a book of enduring charm entitled Your Rugged Constitution. Moving methodically from Preamble to the 22^nd Amendment, the book offers a line-by-line explanation of the Constitution’s original text with concise and accessible commentary. Originally intended to be used as a textbook, it became a classroom standby for a generation of young Americans, surviving on school syllabi until well into the 1970s.

By the turn of the millennium, however, the book had fallen into relative obscurity (well, save for a handful of wistful Amazon reviewers). Long buried in the Press’ archives, it wasn’t until recently, when the Press’ backlist was being scanned for Google, that Director Alan Harvey took notice of the book—along with all its myriad editions and translations. Struck by its novelty, he asked then Law Editor (now Editor-in-Chief), Kate Wahl if she would want to reprint it. Though the will was there, at the time, printing technology was such that a full-color reprint of the book would not have been cost-effective, yet a black-and-white version would hardly do justice to the book’s many illustrations. “But now,” says Harvey, “we can afford to print it in color and make it cool.”

A Usable Past

How regimes shore up power through national narratives.

Of all the factors that have been considered and evaluated as primers for the pervasive nature of authoritarianism in the Middle East, perhaps none are quite so crucial, nor quite so overlooked, as that of the national narrative. In her new book, Official Stories, International Relations professor, Laurie Brand, explores this particular discursive tool used by autocrats to legitimate their governments and quell public unrest. Citing political theorists the likes of Gramsci and Foucault, and zeroing in on the case studies of Egypt and Algeria, Brand explores how stories are deployed by ruling powers and internalized by those they rule to stabilize their otherwise unpopular regimes. 

The following is an excerpt from Offical Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria, by Laurie A. Brand:

Prior to the Arab uprisings in spring 2011, much ink was spilt by academ­ics, pundits, and journalists in an attempt to explain the resilience of the range of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Although successive waves of democratization seemed to wash over other parts of the world, the MENA states appeared impervious to the same forces of history. Politicized, polemical, and often ill-informed writing offered a variety of ahistorical arguments focused largely on the purported resistance of a dis­embodied “Islam” or an essentialized Arab culture to any movements toward more meaningful participatory political systems.

Getting Rugged With Thing Theory

How astronauts and IKEA hackers get scrappy and reject passive consumerism.

Apollo 13's makeshift CO2 removal apparatus. Public domain image, courtesy of NASA.

On April 13, 1970 the United States’ third manned mission to the moon was thrown into a tailspin when an oxygen tank exploded, crippling key life support systems in the spacecraft and imperiling the lives of the three-man crew. Among the challenges the crew faced were loss of cabin heat and a shortage of potable water, but most dire was the steadily rising level of carbon dioxide in their finite and precious air space. In an ultimately life-saving feat of ingenuity, ground support radioed in instructions on how to jury-rig a CO2 removal system using the craft’s lithium hydroxide canisters, duct tape, cardboard, and a spacesuit hose—an improvised apparatus the astronauts referred to as “the mailbox.”

Our Fall Catalog (as Told by A Flowchart)

A quick visual guide to help you navigate our Fall 2014 offerings. You're welcome.

A new season means new books, and as we steadily transition into Fall, it's time for SUP to roll out our Fall 2014 catalog, featuring books on everything from intellectual property law, and sentimental novels, to politics in the late Ottoman Empire, and (spoiler alert) Tequila! For intrepid readers, a comprehensive account of our upcoming books can be viewed in our catalog online; for the reader on-the-go, however, the following chart should help you quickly drill down to books particular to your interests.

                            

View our full Fall 2014 catalog »