Corporate social responsibility codes are guidelines that companies voluntarily develop and publish with the objective of showing the public their commitment to respect human rights, to improve fundamental workplace standards worldwide and to protect the natural environment. These corporate codes have become a crucial element in the regulatory architecture for globally operating companies. By focusing on the characteristics of the codes, their effects on society and their legal consequences, this book seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of corporate codes and the law. Enforcing Corporate Social Responsibility Codes develops proposals on the relationship between global corporate self-regulation and the national private law systems. It uses methods of comparative law and sociological jurisprudence to argue that national private law can, and in fact should, enforce these codes as genuine legal obligations. The author formulates legal policy recommendations for English and German private law that indicate how the proposed legal enforcement could be realised in practice. The dissertation on which this book is based was awarded the second prize in the humanities category of the Deutscher Studienpreis (German Thesis Award) by the Koerber Foundation in November 2015.

In a dramatic departure from its voluntary origins, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is rapidly shifting to hold multinational companies accountable for more than traditional shareholder performance. This CSR movement is embracing new environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks that both promote global sustainability goals and enhance accountability for negative impacts businesses can have on ‘planet and people’. This collection of essays by leading businesspeople, international civil servants, legal practitioners, academics, and other experts offers a forward-looking and pragmatic perspective that illuminates the major themes in this movement towards increasingly sustainable, transparent and accountable business practices. The collection shows how CSR has evolved to account for societal pressures, environmental, climate change and human rights impacts, international policy imperatives and the practical challenges of regulating commercial activity that transcends borders. The chapters offer an in-depth examination of current issues including: international frameworks and multistakeholder initiatives catalysing foundational change; the shifting emphasis on corporate imperatives to avoid harm to third parties; trends in CSR, focused on assuring the planet's future sustainability and social stability; regulatory initiatives around the globe, including Europe, North America, Asia and Africa; and extended accountability for activities of corporate group members and supply chains. The pressure and business case for companies to incorporate CSR into corporate governance is intensifying with each quarter, shareholder meeting, and regulatory agenda. The integration of CSR and new ESG frameworks into multinational corporate strategy and operations is key to sustainable business models that can generate long-term value for the organization and all stakeholders. Their acceptance as cornerstones of 21st century business practice appears inevitable. Taking full account of the imperative for companies and their lawyers to grapple with the practical and legal challenges in this area, this volume is an invaluable and pragmatic addition to the practitioners’ toolbox at this important juncture in an ever-more dynamic field.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This book contends that the concept of fairness should be embraced and developed as a middle ground between strictly utilitarian and fundamental rights-based approaches to intellectual property (IP) law. Annette Kur, Nari Lee and Anna Tischner provide elegant arguments as to why this should be the case, and offer insights into how the operation of fairness as a legal notion can fulfil the role of mediator between the property aspects of IP law, market regulation and general welfare.

Contract and Regulation: A Handbook on New Methods of Law Making in Private Law sheds light on the darker side of contracts. It begins by exploring the ‘regulatory space’ in which projects are planned, deals are done, and goods and services are consumed, then shows how a ‘bottom-up’ approach can be adopted in order to view this transactional space through the eyes of contractors. The expert contributors explore modes of governance that do not fit nicely into traditional contract theory, paying special attention to three key examples: governance and codes of conduction, networks and relations, compliance and use.

This book provides a critical socio-legal study that brings together the latest scholarly advances on corporate social responsibility, and, at the same time, addresses the pressing issue of corporate liability for harmful acts across the supply and production chains. Corporations have seldom been held responsible and virtually never liable for the acts of their subsidiaries and subcontractors. Actors as different as workers, investors, individual consumers, and shareholder activists claim that corporations should accept greater responsibility for communities and environments affected by their activities. The book argues that a global value chain's head corporations remain immune to any liability because of the 'economically dependent-legally independent' relationships between core corporations and their periphery suppliers and subcontractors. To tackle this problem, globally, the author acknowledges that 'we' as a society need to reduce the economic dependence as described above – which is far too excessive – by ensuring a level playing field both economically and socially. More concretely, she argues that in order to realise transnational corporate liability, 'we' as lawyers need to find a way (or ways) to establish legally effective relationships between head corporations and their economically dependent entities. Readers of this book will be able to export the concept of corporate social liability, developed in the context of value chains, and apply it to other contexts involving corporate activities where they need to tackle unrestrained corporate freedom and make global businesses responsible and socially useful.

An edited volume exploring the interaction between EU external relations law and private law, examining how the relationship has affected the evolution of the EU's competence, the extent of EU private law's reach beyond the boundaries of an internal market, and how the EU contributes to the formation of private regulation at an international level.

A comprehensive compendium for the field of transnational law by providing a treatment and presentation in an area that has become one of the most intriguing and innovative developments in legal doctrine, scholarship, theory, as well as practice today. With a considerable contribution from and engagement with social sciences, it features numerous reflections on the relationship between transnational law and legal practice.

Corporate Social Responsibility has for long been on the agenda in the business world and recently, it has also become a political agenda in the European Union. Focusing on international supply chains and their control based on studies of law in several European jurisdictions, this book aims to advance the discussion on the application and enforcement of CSR. Drawing parallels to US and Canadian law, the book explores to what extent private law tools can be used as an enforcement device and it ultimately asks if what we are witnessing is the formation of a new area of law, employing the interplay of contract and tort – a law of "production liability", as a corollary of the concept of "product liability".

Forty years ago Amartya Sen introduced to the world a novel approach to the idea of equality: the notion of 'basic capability' as 'a morally relevant dimension' and the claim that we should focus upon equality of basic capabilities ('a person being able to do certain basic things'). These ideas, as developed by Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum, have launched an academic armada now proceeding under the flag of the 'capability approach' (CA). While that flag has ventured far and wide and engaged many areas of inquiry, this volume of essays is the first to explore how CA might shed light upon labour law. The capabilities approach can illuminate our understanding of labour law across three dimensions. Part I looks at the nature of the basic relationship between CA and labour law-do they share common ground or disagree about what is important? Can the CA provide a normative 'foundation' for labour law? Part II goes further by examining the relationship of the CA and other well-established perspectives on labour law, including economics, history, critical theory, restorative justice, and human rights. Part III examines the possible relevance of the CA to a range of specific labour law issues, such as freedom of association, age discrimination in the workplace, trade, employment policy, and sweatshop goods.

This book explores the potential of the current investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism to materialise the responsibility of foreign investors through the states' counterclaims and defences at the jurisdictional, merits, and quantum phases. In doing so, it seeks to incorporate the recent developments of ISDS in both international and domestic laws of certain jurisdictions on corporate responsibility, including the parent company's due diligence and legal effects of corporations' voluntary commitments. The book also reflects the interests and perspectives of the victims who suffered loss and injury due to investors' conduct. The author demonstrates that the current system does have the inherent potential to advance responsible investment, even though reforms are needed to overcome its limitations. Fully utilising this potential to reflect investor responsibility in IIA-based dispute settlement mechanisms will help to develop practices based on greater due diligence and responsible business conduct.