scholarly journals Stemming the Flow of Corporate Human Rights Abuses: Incorporating the Ruggie Report in the Common Law Doctrine of Foreign Judgment Enforcement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Erin Matariki Carr
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
The Common ◽  
Foreign Judgment

<p>The eminent case of Aguinda v Chevron Corporation, currently in its twentieth year of litigation, represents a growing phenomenon in international commercial litigation between multinational corporations and victims of human rights abuse from developing nations. In 2011 Aguinda awarded approximately US$18 billion against Chevron for extreme environmental and human rights abuse from oil contamination in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Chevron has removed its assets from Ecuador’s jurisdiction leaving the plaintiffs without remedy. This paper traces Aguinda to Canada where the plaintiffs’ action in Yaiguaje to enforce the judgment to satisfy their debt is stayed. This paper critiques this decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice as being unprincipled and failing to consider the wider implications of its decision on the struggle for developing nations to remedy human rights abuses by multinational corporations. This paper argues that the common law doctrine of foreign judgment enforcement must evolve to reflect the needs of modern society. The paper does this by incorporating the “Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights” report released by the United Nations in 2011.</p>

scholarly journals Stemming the Flow of Corporate Human Rights Abuses: Incorporating the Ruggie Report in the Common Law Doctrine of Foreign Judgment Enforcement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Erin Matariki Carr
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
The Common ◽  
Foreign Judgment

<p>The eminent case of Aguinda v Chevron Corporation, currently in its twentieth year of litigation, represents a growing phenomenon in international commercial litigation between multinational corporations and victims of human rights abuse from developing nations. In 2011 Aguinda awarded approximately US$18 billion against Chevron for extreme environmental and human rights abuse from oil contamination in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Chevron has removed its assets from Ecuador’s jurisdiction leaving the plaintiffs without remedy. This paper traces Aguinda to Canada where the plaintiffs’ action in Yaiguaje to enforce the judgment to satisfy their debt is stayed. This paper critiques this decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice as being unprincipled and failing to consider the wider implications of its decision on the struggle for developing nations to remedy human rights abuses by multinational corporations. This paper argues that the common law doctrine of foreign judgment enforcement must evolve to reflect the needs of modern society. The paper does this by incorporating the “Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights” report released by the United Nations in 2011.</p>

1. What is equity?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pearce ◽  
Warren Barr
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
The Common

This chapter defines equity. Equity is both a different system of law which recognizes rights and obligations that the common law does not, and a system which seeks to address the inherent gaps which can exist in following any set of rules. Equity plays a large, but largely hidden, role in all our lives. For instance, buying houses with a partner, borrowing money, investing in private or company pensions, making complex arrangements in a will, or preventing human rights abuse all use some form of mechanism developed in equity, such as trust. Thus, equity, even if we do not always appreciate it, intrudes into many parts of our lives.

Can Multinational Corporations be responsible for human rights violation of its outsourcee company? Response of national or international law?

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-179
Author(s):  
Alessandro Suppa ◽  
Pavel Bureš
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Corporate Law ◽  
International Economy ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Original Question ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Human Rights Violation

SummaryNowadays, an important role in the world is played by Multinational Corporations (MNCs). They hire, produce, and influence the international economy, but also, they exploit, pollute. Their business activities might have a worldwide effect on human lives. The question of the responsibility of MNCs has drawn the attention of many scholars, mainly from the study field labelled “Business and Human Rights”. The present paper does not examine the topic under the same approach. The authors aim at presenting the issue in a broader perspective, exploring the concept of due diligence both in international and corporate law. In this paper, authors strategically use the uniformity of national legislations as a possible and alternative solution to the issue. They are aware of three fundamental factors: 1) the definition of MNCs needs to be as clear as possible, so to avoid any degree of uncertainty; 2) the outsourcing phenomenon interacts with that definition; 3) in case of no possibility to include outsourcing in the definition of MNC, the original question arises in a significant way.

Municipal Courts and the International Interpretive Principle: Al-Kateb v Godwin

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Global Problems ◽  
The Common ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Constitutional Adjudication

This article examines the decision in Al-Kateb v Godwin (2004) 219 CLR 562. It revisits the suggested ‘heresy‘ that international human rights law may influence the interpretation of the Australian Constitution and other legal texts. Accessing universal human rights law, including in constitutional adjudication, was endorsed in the Bangalore Principles on the Domestic Application of International Human Rights Norms 1988. The author suggests that interpreting statutory language in this way is not dissimilar to the common-law principle of interpreting statutes so as to uphold basic rights. But should an analogous approach be permissible in deciding the meaning of constitutional language? Although arguably invoked by the majority of the High Court in Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992) 175 CLR 1, in the context of declaring the common-law, so far this approach has not been accepted for constitutional elaboration in Australia. But should this be so in the age of global problems and internationalism?

THE ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS IN PREVENTING HUMAN RIGHTS AND SEXUAL ABUSE IN JAMMU-KASHMIR CONFLICT

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Foday Yarbou
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Community ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Territorial Disputes ◽  
Jammu And Kashmir ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The People ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
United Nation

AbstractThe conflict between Jammu and Kashmir has acquired a multifaceted character. On one hand, the conflict involves national and territorial contestations between India and Pakistan, and on the other, it entails different kinds of human rights abuses and various political demands by religious, linguistic, regional, and ethnic groups in both parts. This article aims to portrait the images and human rights abuses meted on the people of Jammu and Kashmir. It also urges and pleads to India and Pakistan and all those countries who are taking part directly or indirectly in the territorial disputes or conflict in the region of Jammu and Kashmir to end the conflict. Human rights abuse such as torture, rape, sexual harassment, murder, and unnecessary killings of the people of this region were all condemned by the author of this article. He further requests the international community such as the United Nation to take a bold step in settling the conflict in that region by passing an effective resolution at the international level that will put an end to the conflict. In this article, the author uses a qualitative research method to explore different journals and write up of scholars in finding tangible solutions to the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. The author also uses a theoretical explanation in the article. The result of this article intends to see that all the main concerning points raised in this write-up are fully considered and implemented by the United Nation in bringing peace and stability in the region of Jammu and Kashmir. Conflict in this region has become a worrying issue in the international community and the necessary steps should be taken to bring it to halt.

On Universals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Etienne Balibar
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
The Future ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
The Common ◽  
Performative Contradiction

Many on the Left have looked upon “universal” as a dirty word, one that signals liberalism's failure to recognize the masculinist and Eurocentric assumptions from which it proceeds. In rejecting universalism, we have learned to reorient politics around particulars, positionalities, identities, immanence, and multiple modernities. This book builds on these critiques of the tacit exclusions of Enlightenment thought, while at the same time working to rescue and reinvent what universal claims can offer for a revolutionary politics answerable to the common. In the contemporary quarrel of universals, the book shows, the stakes are no less than the future of our democracies. The book investigates the paradoxical processes by which the universal is constructed and deconstructed, instituted and challenged, in modern society. It shows that every statement and institution of the universal—such as declarations of human rights—carry an exclusionary, particularizing principle within themselves and that every universalism immediately falls prey to countervailing universalisms. Always equivocal and plural, the universal is thus a persistent site of conflict within societies and within subjects themselves. And yet, the book suggests, the very conflict of the universal—constituted as an ever-unfolding performative contradiction—also provides the emancipatory force needed to reinvigorate and reimagine contemporary politics and philosophy. In conversation with a range of thinkers from Marx, Freud, and Benjamin through Foucault, Derrida, and Scott, the book shows the power that resides not in the adoption of a single universalism but in harnessing the energies made available by claims to universality in order to establish a common answerable to difference.

Is there a Duty to Prevent Harm in Tort? A Common Law Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-145
Author(s):  
Paula Giliker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Public Authority ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Statutory Duty ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
The Common

Abstract In this paper, I will examine the extent to which the common law of tort in England and Wales imposes a duty to prevent harm on public authorities and private individuals. As will be seen, the starting point for the common law is that such liability should, in both cases, be regarded as exceptional. This must, however, be weighed against duties to prevent harm that arise under the torts of negligence and breach of statutory duty. Public authorities may also face claims that their failure to prevent harm is in breach of ECHR arts 2 or 3. While the law is complex, this paper identifies three key arguments that explain the current legal position at common law, namely that: (i) tort law should treat private and public parties alike: (ii) human rights claims should be treated as distinct from private law claims and (iii) libertarian concerns signify that a duty to prevent harm should be exceptional and needs to be justified. While these arguments provide both an explanation of and a justification for the current law, this article questions to what extent the treatment of public authority liability may be regarded as unduly harsh on vulnerable claimants.

scholarly journals Roles of the Courts in New Zealand in Giving Effect to International Human Rights - with Some History

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J Keith
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Common Law ◽  
General Effect ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
Domestic Law

The Right Honourable Sir Kenneth Keith was the fourth speaker at the NZ Institute of International Affairs Seminar. In this article he describes and reflects upon the role of courts and judges in relation to the advancement of human rights, an issue covered in K J Keith (ed) Essays on Human Rights (Sweet and Maxwell, Wellington, 1968). The article is divided into two parts. The first part discusses international lawmakers attempting to protect individual groups of people from 1648 to 1948, including religious minorities and foreign traders, slaves, aboriginal natives, victims of armed conflict, and workers. The second part discusses how from 1945 to 1948, there was a shift in international law to universal protection. The author notes that while treaties are not part of domestic law, they may have a constitutional role, be relevant in determining the common law, give content to the words of a statute, help interpret legislation which is in line with a treaty, help interpret legislation which is designed to give general effect to a treaty (but which is silent on the particular matter), and help interpret and affect the operation of legislation to which the international text has no apparent direct relation. 

Human Rights Litigation against Multinationals in Practice

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Applicable Law ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Global North ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Parent Companies

This book reviews the current position in this field, which has developed over the past 25 years, designed to hold multinationals to account, legally, for human rights abuses in the Global South. The authors are practising lawyers who have litigated and led prominent cases of legal significance in this field. Although the focus is on the Global North, where most of the cases have been brought—United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, France, Netherlands, and Germany—there is also a chapter on South Africa. The cases cited include claims against parent companies for harm caused by subsidiary operations, claims for corporate complicity in violations perpetrated by States, and claims arising in a supply chain context. Whilst other books have included consideration of the legal aspects of many of the cases, the focus here is on the interrelated strategic and practical, as well as legal, considerations on which viability and prospects of success depend. In addition to questions of jurisdiction, applicable law, and theories of liability, obstacles to justice concerning issues such as access to information, collective actions, witness protection, damages and costs, and funding regimes (including a specific chapter on litigation funding), and issues relating to public pressure and settlement, are discussed. Although most of the authors act for victims, there is a substantial chapter providing the perspectives of business. Since this area of litigation has developed concurrently with, and has formed part of, the rapidly mushrooming field of business and human rights, the contextual relevance of the UNGPs is considered.

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