Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Meese and Oman on Hobby Lobby

Alan Meese and Nate Oman, both of William and Mary, have written an exceptionally lucid essay in the Harvard Law Review Forum on one of the main issues in Hobby Lobby: whether a for-profit corporation can qualify as a person for purposes of RFRA. It’s one of the best things on Hobby Lobby I’ve read and I recommend it to people trying to make sense of the issue.

Meese and Oman make three big points. First, closely-held corporations like Hobby Lobby fit naturally within RFRA’s language. Second, there is nothing unusual about closely-held corporations that embody shareholders’ religions. Many such firms exist, and they do not violate some elementary principle of corporate law. Third, limiting the exercise of religion to natural persons mistakes an important goal of religious freedom. “[R]eligious freedom is broader than an individualist concern with personal rights,” they explain. “Rather, it is about limiting the ability of the state to regulate a particular kind of conduct–religious exercise–even when corporate bodies engage in that conduct.”

To me, the second point is the most suggestive for the outcome of Hobby Lobby. Most people think of corporations as large, publicly-traded firms with thousands of passive shareholders who have little to do with day-to-day operations: Exxon Mobil. It would be strange for such a corporation to exercise a religion. But most corporations, like Hobby Lobby itself, are small, private firms with a handful of shareholders. It’s not at all strange to think that the five owners of Hobby Lobby could legitimately want to run their corporation in a way that advances their religious values.

Meese and Oman argue against drawing a distinction, for RFRA purposes, between large corporations like Exxon Mobil and close corporations like Hobby Lobby. But the distinction could be a way for the Court to avoid practical difficulties. The Court could hold that close corporations like Hobby Lobby are RFRA persons and save the question of large corporations for another day. Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts hinted at that outcome during oral argument.

We’ll see what the Court decides. Meanwhile, Meese and Oman have written a very worthwhile essay. You can read it here.

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Trejo, “Popular Movements in Autocracies: Religion, Repression, and Indigenous Collective Action in Mexico”

This July, Cambridge University Press will publish Popular Movements in Autocracies: Religion, Repression, and Indigenous Collective Action in Mexico by Guillermo Trejo (Duke University). The publisher’s description follows.Popular Movements in Autocracies

This book presents a new explanation of the rise, development and demise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies; the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion; and the impact of protest and rebellion on democratization. Focusing on poor indigenous villages in Mexico’s authoritarian regime, the book shows that the spread of U.S. Protestant missionaries and the competition for indigenous souls motivated the Catholic Church to become a major promoter of indigenous movements for land redistribution and indigenous rights. The book explains why the outbreak of local rebellions, the transformation of indigenous claims for land into demands for ethnic autonomy and self-determination, and the threat of a generalized social uprising motivated national elites to democratize. Drawing on an original dataset of indigenous collective action and on extensive fieldwork, the empirical analysis of the book combines quantitative evidence with case studies and life histories.

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Viswanath, “The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India”

This July, Columbia University Press will publish The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India by Rupa Viswanath (University of Göttingen). The publisher’s description follows.

Once known as “Pariahs,” Dalits are primarily descendants of unfree agrarian laborers. They belong to India’s lowest castes, face overwhelming poverty and discrimination, and continue to be a source of public anxiety. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, this book follows the conception and evolution of the “Pariah problem” in public consciousness in the 1890s. It shows how high-caste landlords, state officials, and well-intentioned missionaries conceived of Dalit oppression and prevented substantive solutions to the “Pariah Problem”—with consequences that continue to be felt today.

The book begins with a description of the everyday lives of Dalit laborers in the 1890s and highlights the systematic efforts made by the state and Indian elites to protect Indian slavery from public scrutiny. Protestant missionaries were the first non-Dalits to draw attention to their plight. However, their vision of the Pariahs’ suffering as a result of Hindu religious prejudice obscured the fact that the entire agrarian political-economic system depended on Pariah labor. The Indian public as well as colonial officials came to share a view compatible with missionary explanations, which meant all subsequent welfare efforts directed at Dalits focused on religious and social transformation rather than on structural reform. Methodologically, theoretically, and empirically, this book breaks new ground to demonstrate how events in the early decades of state-sponsored welfare directed at Dalits laid the groundwork for the present day, where the postcolonial state and well-meaning social and religious reformers continue to downplay Dalits’ landlessness, violent suppression, and political subordination.