Anglais, Khâgne Lyon, Spécialité Anglais (Thème et Presse).
1. Thème:
Traduire en anglais le texte suivant, pour la semaine de la rentrée (ce travail n’est pas à rendre, mais
à voir en classe) :
2. Presse :
Préparer l’article suivant pour la semaine de la rentrée. Compréhension complète, résumé détaillé
(paragraphe par paragraphe, avec élucidation des références nécessaires à la compréhension),
résumé synthétique (idées essentielles), esquisse de commentaire (développement de la thématique
du texte).
Theocracy Versus Democracy
How the reckless Hobby Lobby decision has excited the
imagination of the right wing.
By William Greider, April 3, 2015 The Nation
The public wrath directed at God-fearing Republican politicians in Indiana and Arkansas is
pounding on the wrong Christians. The real culprits are the five Bible-thumping conservatives on
the Supreme Court. They inspired this controversy with their inflammatory decision last year in the
Hobby Lobby case.
The Supreme justices ruled then that corporate owners possess religious convictions entitled to First
Amendment protection against intrusions by the federal government. That case was about birth
control and Obamacare’s mandated healthcare coverage. But the Court’s half-baked logic excited
the imagination of right-wing activists and lawyers.
If employers can reject the birth-control pills for their employees by citing their religious objections
to contraception, do employers also have a right to refuse serving gay couples because they abhor
same-sex marriages? Conservatives set out to initiate state laws and law suits designed to provoke
more constitutional conflicts between church and state—cases that can wind up before the Supreme
Court and will be decided by the same right-wing majority that issued the Hobby Lobby ruling.
However, one citizen’s religious convictions may look like old-fashioned bigotry to other citizens
who suffer the consequences. Alex Luchenitser of Americans United for Separation of Church and
State wonders if the Supreme Court has opened the door to “a new era of inequality.”
“Hobby Lobby,” he wrote in the Harvard Law and Policy Review, “is a sweeping decision that
threatens to turn the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) into a law that, instead of
protecting religious freedom, allows religious believers to force their faith on others in a variety of
ways.”
Before the recent uproar occurred, Luchenitser had predicted it. Hobby Lobby“may trigger a drastic
uptick in claims for religious exemptions,” he said, though plaintiffs in the most publicized cases
(like the photographer who refused to do wedding pictures for a gay couple) have so far lost in
court.
The Hobby Lobby decision “may particularly impact LGBT cases,“ he explained. Because there is
no federal law prohibiting discrimination against LGBT citizens, so most of the new cases will
originate at the state level under state laws. Complaints that gain traction can eventually wind up in
federal courts.
President Obama, for example, issued an executive order telling federal contractors they must not
discriminate against gays and lesbians. “It will not be surprising if religiously affiliated federal
contractors rely on Hobby Lobby to argue for an exemption to the prohibition against anti-LGBT
discrimination,” Luchenitser wrote.
This result is very different from what Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah and Teddy Kennedy of
Massachusetts had in mind back in 1993 when they co-sponsored the original RFRA. Both senators
emphasized that the original legislation was a bipartisan attempt to avoid petty church-state
conflicts and defuse nettlesome issues that might mean a lot to various faith groups but have only
trivial effect on government’s objectives.
Should horse-drawn Amish buggies be compelled to carry state-required warning of a slow-moving
vehicle? Does a municipal law banning consumption of alcohol apply to serving wine at
communion services? Did a public school ban on wearing headgear in class prohibit Jewish
yarmulkes?
The Roberts Court blew away the original law’s careful restraints. The justices reinterpreted the
RFRA and granted First Amendment rights to the private religious views of some company owners.
Some of the new laws enacted by state legislatures like Indiana’s attempt to expand things further.
When Governor Mike Pence insisted Indiana’s law did not explicitly authorize discrimination
against gays, he was technically correct. What he didn’t say is that the law is deliberately designed
to encourage true believers to litigate and it strengthens their legal foundation for winning.
There will be more lawsuits, because the justices created their own ambiguities in Hobby Lobby that
can provide the fodder for more Supreme Court decisions. The Court, for instance, did not ask the
employees at Hobby Lobby how they felt about their boss’s declaration of conscience. Would they
be fired if they express dissent? Does the First Amendment protect their conscience and free
speech?
Nor did the Supreme Court make clear whether these new religious rights apply only to closely held
corporations controlled by families or also for very large companies theoretically “owned” by
millions of shareholders and institutional investors including union pension funds. How would any
prudent investor find out what his company’s religious values?
The Hobby Lobby case opens important implications for corporate governance that I suspect most
companies would dread. Walmart is a leading example of potential contradictions—the largest
retailer in the nation with 2.2 million employees and controlled by a family of four billionaires with
a total net worth around $156 billion.
Wal-Mart swiftly announced its opposition to Arkansas’s “religious freedom” legislation and this
“good guy” declaration was joined by many other influential corporate names. The media described
their decision as “good for business,” and perhaps it was. But I have a hunch something more was
involved. Savvy corporates may also see a dangerous potential for them in mixing law and religious
values in an unstable brew.
If the corporation has the right to protect itself from government by hiding behind its supposed
religious values, does the public have a right to know what those values are?
The lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State drew a strong conclusion:
“Religions should not become a trump card that allows one who professes it to hire or serve
whomever they want. Hobby Lobby represents a step in the direction of such a retrograde society,
atomized and divided by corporate theocracy.”