Last week's Hobby Lobby ruling charted new legal territory by granting corporations the same religious rights as real people. The rationale behind the decision—that expanding constitutional rights to businesses is necessary to "protect the rights of people associated with the corporation"—is far from novel.
A line of Supreme Court rulings stretching back 200 years has blurred the distinction between flesh-and-blood citizens and the businesses they own, laying the groundwork for Hobby Lobby and the equally contentious Citizens United ruling.
If a corporation has First Amendment rights, could it also claim Second Amendment protections? Amazingly, this is a question some scholars are seriously pondering.
As Darrell A.H. Miller wrote in his 2011 article "Guns, Inc." in the NYU Law Review, "If Citizens United is taken seriously, the Second Amendment, like the First Amendment and like many other provisions of the Bill of Rights, guarantees liberties to natural and corporate persons alike." Bang!
The full article is available here
