Does freedom of religion protect religious institutions, or does it only protect the individual religious conscience? Canadian jurisprudence after the Charter of Rights and Freedoms takes a decidedly individualist turn, deliberately avoiding the question of the rights of religious institutions. This individualist focus neglects the historical trajectory of religious freedom, the social understanding of religious faith by religious adherents themselves, and the institutional structures in which religion emerges and develops, and though which it is ultimately protected. An institutional account of religious liberty can complement the individualist account, as it better explains the legal order, better reflects actual religious practice, and better preserves both institutional and individual religious liberty. Recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada go some way towards correcting this individualist bias, but balk at resolving the legal status of religious institutions. This persistent ambiguity will prove problematic in controversies over religious autonomy already making their way through the courts.

Hobby Lobby, a company that should be merely an individual’s DIY-dream, has become a lawyer’s conundrum. To be precise, this puzzle emerges from the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) holding in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores (Hobby Lobby) that the contraceptive mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) because it substantially burdens the religious beliefs of the three closely held corporations (CHCs) in the case. The Court thus placed Hobby Lobby Stores (Hobby Lobby), Mardel, and Conestoga Wood Specialty Corporation (Conestoga) at the intersection of two of the most thrilling social and legal debates of our times. Upon reading the Court’s decision, the lawyer — as well as the sensible hobby bricoleur — would wonder how far corporate “human” rights can and should go and whether such rights can and should be correlated to responsibilities. They would also consider a twisted variant of the separation of church and state question, and inquire to what extent the state should protect human rights from religious interference. The judgment has important implications for human rights, in particular by weakening the protection of reproductive and healthcare rights, and by posing possible threats to freedom from discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. While the article engages with some of these consequences, its prime aim is to explore a more basic aspect: the type of entity which can hold and exercise religious views. It is this aspect which we identify as the source of potential socio-legal conflict in the United States. The analysis will compare SCOTUS’ reasoning on corporate form, profit-making objective, and limitations to religious exercise in Hobby Lobby to relevant jurisprudence of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) mechanisms — the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Commission on Human Rights (EComHR). The comparative study therefore will allow us to provide answers to core questions: Whose right and who’s right? In other words, does a corporate right to exercise religion exist and is SCOTUS right in recognizing such protection to for-profit entities or the ECtHR in denying it. Looking for inspiration outside the realm of US case law may prove a delicate endeavor, given the different structure of the ECtHR (as a supra-national court overseeing 47 sovereign states), and the reticence of certain circles in the US to recognize any comparative value to be gained from foreign judgments. Despite these caveats, the parallel between the two jurisdictions should provide a fuller account of how the interpretations on corporate religious freedom differ, and avenues for alternative interpretation.

This article explores the relationship between neoconservative values and neoliberalism in American jurisprudence through a critique of the US Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision. The article uncovers how the Court imposes market-oriented logic on religious expression and in the process spiritualizes economic activity. In this way neoliberal rationality is intertwined with neoconservative values. For example, exercising religion through corporatization can be understood as a neoconservative moderation of the corrupting influence of excessive neoliberal individualism. Finally, while the decision furthers employer control of workers' reproduction, the Court's proposed workaround—a direct government contraceptives program—would undermine that control and points to another, more eman-cipatory response to the problems of neoliberalism.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc., the Supreme Court held, for the first time, that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to for-profit corporations and, on that basis, it allowed Hobby Lobby to omit otherwise mandated contraceptive coverage from its employee healthcare package. Critics argue that the Court's novel expansion of corporate rights is fundamentally inconsistent with the basic principles of corporate law. In particular, they contend that the decision ignores the fact that the corporation, as an artificial entity, cannot exercise religion in its own right, and they decry the notion that the law might look through the corporate veil to protect the corporate owners' rights even while having the veil shield the owners from liability for the corporation's wrongs. In addition to these (supposed) deviations from corporate law principles, commentators express deep concern about Hobby Lobby's implications. Will the decision apply not just to closely-held corporations but to publicly traded ones as well? If so, how should courts deal with disagreement among shareholders about the religious convictions the corporation should adopt? Will the Court-sanctioned exemption from the contraceptive mandate open the door to other religiously-based exemptions from healthcare coverage that the Affordable Care Act requires—blood transfusions for the corporation owned by Jehovah's Witnesses , or any form of medicine other than faith healing for the corporation owned by Christian Scientists? And does the notion of corporate religious rights threaten to justify corporate invocations of other rights—perhaps even Second Amendment rights to bear arms, or rights of the corporation to vote in political elections? This Article focuses on the corporate law aspects of the decision, and it seeks to respond to the groundswell of reactions among corporate law scholars. I argue here that much of the consternation results from mistaken notions about the nature of the corporation and the rights that its owners may enjoy. The ambition here, however, is not merely to correct misconceptions. This Article seeks to offer a theory of what the corporation is, what it is for, and why we might ascribe religious rights to it in the first place—considerations that elucidate just what Hobby Lobby should, and should not, portend. I argue that constitutional rights should be ascribed to a corporation when it is necessary to protect the constitutional rights of its controlling members. To that end, I provide a way of determining just who the corporation's controlling members are. At the same time, I seek to elucidate, and ultimately cabin, the scope of corpo

Prepared for inter-religious dialogue with Muslim faculties in Izmir, Turkey, and Qom, Iran. Dialogues took place in Izmir and in Rome in 2012.