I had a puzzling and still slightly disturbing interaction with a non-practicing JD over the week-end. As things happened, a panelist mentioned the Hobby-Lobby case and he felt compelled to comment. He raised the prospect of a solely computer controlled company (which is reasonable) but extended it to a bit of an extreme.
As was predictable, I tried talking to him afterwards (because I had actually read the entire decision and the dissent) and found out he had not. He was declaring the decision flawed for reasons I could not really determine. When I tried to respond to his complaints against the decision by pointing out that those issues had been addressed in both the dissent and the majority opinions, he declared them to be irrelevant. When I protested that the arguments made by the majority were logically coherent and in keeping with past decisions, he declared me an idealist (a surprise to anybody who knows me) and that the coherency of it irrelevant because court decisions are decided for other reasons.
Because we broke up and didn't discuss it later, I don't know his views in more detail but I am guessing that his concern is that the decision is part of a trend that he finds worrying in that corporate administration is becoming increasingly driven by ideological and social questions instead of the clear predictability of businessmen making money for the government to use while demanding no stake in society. Because he knows little of corporate administration and has not bothered to read the recent controversial rulings of the Supreme Court, his inclination to regard them with antipathy might be a product of fear of unknown consequences.
No comments:
Post a Comment