The reality-based community is having a collective meltdown over today's Hobby Lobby decision. The worst argument I've seen from that corner so far is that it's illegitimate because all members of the majority have penises. Or something.
The second worst argument flows from a Mother Jones diatribe that claims Hobby Lobby is hypocritical because some of its employees are allowed to invest some of their 401(k) savings in mutual funds that happen to own stock in companies that make contraceptives. Over on Facebook, John Carney blasted this argument out of the water:
The protest against corporate personhood is deeply incoherent. If you impose obligations on a corporation and hold it responsible for not meeting that obligation, you are treating the corporation as a thing with agency. Why shouldn't that corporation be able assert rights against this imposition?
What are the defining characteristics of a person? What makes one thing a person and not another thing?
Absent a religiously inspired answer, anything you come up with will an inadequate answer. It will be over-inclusive or under-inclusive. A genealogical investigation will reveal that our concept of personhood is inconstant. An anthropological investigation will reveal that personhood is culturally conditioned and varies between peoples.
Personhood is a social construct. You naive metaphysicians objecting to corporate personhood need a better argument than "corporations aren't people."
There are good theological explanations of personhood. There aren't good secular explanations that would disqualify the application of personhood to corporations for certain purposes.
As regular readers know, I have always been fascinated by military history. The First World War has always been of special interest: Such an amazing and tragic holocaust that was so unnecessary. The paradigmatic march of folly. Here are some books I've found especially valuable to understanding this tragedy:
If data is the plural of anecdote, we need just one more example to go along with this classic story of plaintiff bar abuse from the pen of Keith Paul Bishop to declare that the evidence favors fee-shifting bylaws.
It's a very fair review, although apparently the reporter concluded that I left my audience unpersuaded. Apparently, I'll have to go back and try again, which I'd certainly be happy to do!
The paper on which my lecture was based is Director versus Shareholder Primacy in New Zealand Company Law as Compared to U.S.A. Corporate Law (March 26, 2014). UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research Paper No. 14-05. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2416449.
Abstract: Any model of corporate governance must answer two basic sets of questions: (1) Who decides? In other words, when push comes to shove, who has ultimate control? (2) Whose interests prevail? When the ultimate decision maker is presented with a zero sum game, in which it must prefer the interests of one constituency class over those of all others, whose interests prevail?
On the means question, prior scholarship has almost uniformly favored either shareholder primacy or managerialism. On the ends question, prior scholarship has tended to favor either shareholder primacy or various stakeholder theories. In contrast, this author has proposed a “director primacy” model in which the board of directors is the ultimate decision maker but is required to evaluate decisions using shareholder wealth maximization as the governing normative rule.
Shareholder primacy is widely assumed to be a defining characteristic of New Zealand company law. In assessing that assumption, it is essential to distinguish between the means and ends of corporate governance. As to the latter, New Zealand law does establish shareholder wealth maximization as the corporate objective. As to the former, despite assigning managerial authority to the board of directors, New Zealand company law gives shareholders significant control rights.
Comparing New Zealand company law to the considerably more board-centric regime of U.S. corporate law raises a critical policy issue. If the separation of ownership and control mandated by the latter has significant efficiency advantages, as this article has argued, why has New Zealand opted for a more shareholder-centric model? The most plausible explanation focuses on domain issues, which suggest that there are a small number of New Zealand firms for which director primacy would be optimal. The unitary nature of the New Zealand government may also be a factor, because the competitive federalism inherent in the U.S. system of government promotes a race to the top in which efficient corporate law rules are favored.
The slides from my presentation are reprinted below:
I am huge fan of Charles Stross' Laundry Files SF series (well, in fairness, given my physique I'm a huge fan of anything of which I'm a fan, but let's not go there). Only July 1, The Rhesus Chart (Laundry Files), the latest installment will be published. I've already pre-ordered my copy. Given the very positive starred review it just got from Kirkus Reviews, it looks like you should too:
Laundry regulars by now will be familiar with Stross' trademark sardonic, provocative, disturbing, allusion-filled narrative. And, here, with a structure strongly reminiscent of Len Deighton's early spy novels, the tone grows markedly grimmer, with several significant casualties and tragedies, perhaps in preparation for Angleton's feared CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN.
Stross at the top of his game--which is to say, few do it better. Pounce!
In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don't mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework.
Soccer is called the beautiful game. But football is chess, played with real pieces that try to knock each other's brains out. It doesn't get any more beautiful than that.
, the latest installment will be published. I've already pre-ordered my copy. Given the very positive starred 
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