{"id":7862,"date":"2014-07-03T14:44:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T14:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/03\/robert-paul-wolff-on-the-hobby-lobby-decision\/"},"modified":"2014-07-03T14:44:30","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T14:44:30","slug":"robert-paul-wolff-on-the-hobby-lobby-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/07\/03\/robert-paul-wolff-on-the-hobby-lobby-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Paul Wolff’s Misunderstanding of the Hobby Lobby Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Wolff of The Philosopher's Stone<\/em> writes<\/a>,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

When we got back to our apartment, I turned on my computer to check the news, and learned of the pair of decisions handed down by the Supreme Court.  That both decisions are disastrous goes without saying, but I think they have quite different significances.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Hobby Lobby decision granting to certain businesses the legal right to claim protection of their "religious beliefs" against The Affordable Care Act is by any measure the more grotesque of the two, and Justice Ginsburg is clearly correct in warning that the majority has opened the door to an endless series of meretricious claims of conscience by those fictional persons we call corporations.  Only someone with Marx's mordant satirical bent could fully appreciate the decision to confer personhood on corporations while robbing actual persons of the elementary right to medical protection.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I beg to differ.  First of all, the SCOTUS decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was not that personhood is to be conferred on corporations.  That had already been settled by the Dictionary Act enacted in 1871.  Here<\/a> we read:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The Dictionary Act states that \u201cthe words \u2018person\u2019 and \u2018whoever\u2019 include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.\u201d<\/a>12<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The question the court had to decide was whether closely held, for-profit corporations are persons under the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act . "RFRA states that \u201c[the] Government shall not substantially burden a person<\/em>\u2019s exercise of religion.\u201d<\/a>3<\/a> (Ibid<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

If Hobby Lobby is forced by the government to provide abortifacients to its employees, and Hobby Lobby is a person in the eyes of the law, then the government's Affordable Care Act mandate is in violation of the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.  For it would substantially burden Hobby Lobby's proprietors' exercise of religion if they were forced to violate their own consciences by providing the means of what they believe to be murder to their employees.  So the precise question that had to be decided was whether Hobby Lobby is a person in the eyes of the law.  The question was NOT whether corporations are persons in the eyes of the law.  Wolff is wrong if he thinks otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Note that the issue here is not constitutional but statutory: the issue has solely to do with the interpretation and application of a law, RFRA.  As Alan Dershowitz explains<\/a> (starting at 7:52), it has to do merely with the "construction of a statute."<\/span><\/p>\n

Not only was the SCOTUS decision not a decision to confer personhood on corporations, it also does not entail "robbing actual persons of the elementary right to medical protection."  And this, even if (i) there is a positive right to be given medical treatments, drugs, appliances, and whatnot, and (ii) abortion is a purely medical procedure that affects no person other than a pregnant woman.  See Dershowitz. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Can a Sane and Morally Decent Person be a Liberal?<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Central Axiom of Partisan Politics<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>SCOTUS sides with Hobby Lobby on birth control<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Wolff of The Philosopher's Stone writes, When we got back to our apartment, I turned on my computer to check the news, and learned of the pair of decisions handed down by the Supreme Court.  That both decisions are disastrous goes without saying, but I think they have quite different significances. The Hobby Lobby … Continue reading “Robert Paul Wolff’s Misunderstanding of the Hobby Lobby Decision”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[313,34,153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-health-and-fitness","category-morality-and-legality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}