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- Title
RESTORING LIBERALISM TO TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY: FROM UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION'S ASHES TO AN AFTERLIFE OF MULTILATERAL AVENUES.
- Authors
Nam, Steven S.
- Abstract
This Article engages in the recurrent debate over effective transnational corporate accountability and offers the first liberalist defense of universal jurisdiction's marginalization in the U.S. court system. Per the U.S. Supreme Court, foreign tortfeasors including corporate human rights violators may no longer be sued in U.S. courts by their foreign victims via the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) without a sufficient nexus to U.S. territory. Insofar as one motivation of ATS defenders was to expand a global human rights regime internalizing liberal values, this Article contends that pursuing transnational corporate accountability unilaterally through the U.S. judiciary is inconsistent with a core tenet of liberalism itself--a state and its constituents should not be subject to the external authority of other states. Liberal states duly have protested universal jurisdiction over their business enterprises, as well as the indefinite long-term "intervention" it poses. This Article recommends further development of two alternative avenues that encourage multilateral cooperation on transnational corporate accountability. The first is inclusive public-private diplomacy convening all stakeholders, including non-state actors such as victims' legal advocates and culpable companies. Exemplary were wartime forced labor negotiations led by, but hardly restricted to, the American and German governments in 1999, which produced a landmark compensation fund for Nazi-era victims despite the earlier dismissal of related U.S. class action lawsuits. The second avenue consists o f the widely welcomed U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and their use by a polycentric constellation of corporate accountability NGOs, governments, and business enterprises. The Guiding Principles' legacy remains incomplete, however, as many victims of corporate human rights abuses struggle to access concrete remedy; the Accountability and Remedy Project under Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stewardship is intended to address this gap. Ongoing development and implementation of these above alternatives presage the continuing march towards a coherent global corporate accountability regime reliant on cooperation and coordination between stakeholders, rather than on extraterritorial unilateralism.
- Subjects
UNITED States; LIBERALISM; SOCIAL responsibility of business; AFTERLIFE; COURTS; HUMAN rights violations; CLASS actions; SOCIAL responsibility of business -- Law &; legislation
- Publication
Emory International Law Review, 2017, Vol 31, Issue 3, p361
- ISSN
1052-2840
- Publication type
Article