Constitutions and constitutional rights are predominantly designed to control the power and (non-)actions of state agencies within a given territory. Victims of corporate human rights abuses have very limited means – either in their home country or the country where the corporation in question is registered or, indeed, before an international forum – to seek...
Constitutional Obligations of Corporations in Europe
Developments in business and human rights in the past decade reveal a division between voluntary and binding approaches to the questions of whether corporations have human rights obligations and whether they should be held accountable for their human rights impacts. Even though the proponents of both sides attempt to demonstrate that these approaches are not...
Constitutional Rights, Corporate Persons, and Accountability in the United States
The United States Constitution, as well as those of many of the states in the Union, contain extensive and well known categories of fundamental rights which are protected against the assertion of governmental power. These fundamental protections are derived from the Constitutional documents themselves or are extracted from ancient rights and customs recognized at the...
Invoking Fundamental Rights to Hold Companies Accountable: The Indian Experience
This paper will explore the extent to which fundamental rights (FRs) provisions in Part III of the Indian Constitution could be directly invoked against companies to hold them accountable for human rights abuses. I will examine two issues related to this question: the extent of horizontal application of FRs, and the relevance of corporate law...