How many Republicans in Congress, would you guess, believe that corporate shareholders should generally be liable for the debts accrued or crimes committed by that corporation? Working in the other direction, how many free market-loving, conservative donor capitalists believe corporate shareholders or board members ought to be able to tip the playing field by voting said corporation into non-compliance with laws and regulations that apply to competitors?

I’d wager that the number is zero. The impermeability of the corporate veil is central to their beliefs about how the economy should be organized, how the market should promote risk taking, encourage investment and so on.

And yet this week, nearly all of them – whether they’ve thought it through or not – will claim to want to pierce the corporate veil in the latter direction. On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby – a case that will determine whether employers who oppose the use of birth control on religious grounds can deny female workers contraceptive coverage guaranteed to them by the Affordable Care Act.

That’s how the stakes are typically described. The centrality of contraception to the case has united religious conservatives behind Hobby Lobby (a nationwide […]