Mandatory due diligence laws and climate change litigation: Bridging the corporate climate accountability gap?

The debate on corporate climate accountability has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Several countries, particularly in the Global North, have adopted mandatory human rights and/or environmental due diligence legislation. At the same time, judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings are helping to shape the contours of corporate climate accountability. This article considers how litigation against corporations and due diligence legislation interact, and thereby help develop and strengthen corporate climate accountability. While the practice in this area is still limited, there is scope to reflect on early developments and how they may influence both future climate litigation as well as ongoing and future law-making on due diligence. We first review recent developments in climate litigation against corporations, focusing on the extent to which they rely on climate due diligence obligations. We then survey existing and proposed due diligence legislation, examining the extent to which it addresses corporate climate accountability. Finally, we identify scenarios of how due diligence legislation and climate litigation may interact and possibly converge to strengthen corporate climate accountability. We furthermore identify knowledge gaps and areas for further research.     

What Role for Human Rights in Business?

The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2011, following the six‐year mandate of the Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The SRSG developed a framework comprised of three pillars: (1) States have a duty to protect against human rights abuses committed by third parties, including business enterprises; (2) business enterprises have a responsibility to respect human rights; and (3) victims of business‐related human rights abuses need access to effective remedies. In particular, guiding principle (GP) 11 provides that business enterprises should respect human rights, that is, they should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved. This article considers the implications of the Guiding Principles' framework for business; the continuing role of conventional accountability mechanisms in providing access to remedy for victims under the third pillar of the framework; and developments in ‘hard law', with a particular focus on the approach by the UK, since the introduction of the UNGPs, before turning, briefly, to the future for business and human rights.     

制度问责化与问责制度化

制度是\"秀才\"和\"兵\"的结合。\"秀才\"是制度中的肯定性责任,它告诉人们\"路在何方\"。\"兵\"是制度中的否定性责任,它对误入歧途者进行问责。所有的制度,都需强化\"兵\"的存在,是\"制度问责化\"。\"兵\"也容易在情绪决策博弈中迷失方向。由此,需要设置更高位阶的制度,对位阶较低的\"兵\"予以监管,是\"问责制度化\"。要实现问责制度化,需在封闭原理的指引下,藉由制度中安排\"兵\",\"兵\"上安排制度,层层递进,构成一个问责循环系统。从理论回归实践,人民问责权层面的制度、问责权层面的制度、管理权层面的制度,互相运作,形成了实践形态的问责循环系统。其中,只有诉诸制度建设和理性教育,促进管理权的常态监管和非常态监管,人民问责权作为问责循环系统的枢纽才能日趋牢固。     

全球化时代企业劳动者权益保护面临的挑战和对策

经济全球化、全球市场的开放和融合使全球范围的竞争加剧。为了降低生产成本,提高竞争力,许多国家都把压低本国劳动力成本作为首选的方式。这就使政府对劳动关系规制放松,企业拥有更多的工作场所的支配权,采取了更为灵活的雇佣方式,雇佣更多非全日制员工、短期员工、租赁员工等。而这些非“正式”员工的劳动保障和待遇往往都很低,一些基本的劳动权益很难保障。本文分析了全球化对劳动者权益的影响,指出劳动者权益缺失产生的严重后果,最后提出相应的解决对策,即政府应加强对劳动者权益保护,加强企业社会责任,强化工会职能,三管齐下维护劳动者权益。     

Deaths While under Probation Supervision: What Role for Human Rights Legislation?

Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that ‘everyone has the right to life’. This right is contained in all human rights treaties that developed from the UDHR, including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Yet, as we argue, the UK government is failing to protect this right when it comes to certain groups of people under probation supervision. To date, human rights legislation has failed adequately to protect these vulnerable individuals and to hold the state to account. This article explores the greater potential for using human rights legislation to ensure better accountability in this area.     

The unbearable rightfulness of being human: citizenship,displacement, and the right to not have rights

Claims to human rights protection made by displaced persons are displaced from the universe of humanity and rendered ineffective by the geopolitical character of modern international human rights law, in favour of the protection of citizens' rights claims. In response, there is increasing interest in leveraging respect for and protection of the rights of displaced persons through extension of the rights enjoyed and supposedly borne by emplaced citizens. However, it is a mistake to assume that humans as citizens bear human rights or that the freedoms that they may be able to extend beyond state boundaries are universalisable. The extension of the right to citizenship functions to displace questions of human rights themselves. The question of the human in rights is in fact always displaced, as long as the human subject is acted upon as if it could possess rights. In paying attention to the critical perspectives with which displaced persons confront the citizen, she or he may come to appreciate the fact that the universality of human rights is served where one does not claim to have rights but, rather, actively engages, without limits, with others in the struggle for rights and their respect.     

Does transnational private governance reduce or displace labor abuses? Addressing sorting dynamics across global supply chains

The attention of practitioners and scholars of private regulation of working conditions is focused on whether and how corporate buyers can help improve labor and safety standards in the factories that supply them by adopting codes of conduct, joining social certification schemes, participating in social audit processes, and financing safety improvements. I argue that more attention should be paid to the possibility that private regulation schemes – whatever degree of compliance they achieve – mostly result in a displacement effect or sorting dynamic that leaves the overall level of working conditions unchanged. I sketch a research agenda aimed at identifying the conditions under which a sorting dynamic can occur and at conceiving innovative private governance designs that could avoid it.     

The Effect of Corporate Governance on Corporate Performance in the Financial Industry in Nigeria

The business environment in which the financial industry operates is full of uncertainty and limitations. The inability of some firms in this sector to produce capable management that can guide the interests of shareholders in the light of ethics and values has generated frequent cases of business downturn. This has compelled the industry to adopt the strategy of corporate governance which hinges on the intellectual honesty of directors and management to promote transparency, equity, and accountability, and provide leadership that will guide the industry in the right direction. The major objective of this paper is to ascertain whether corporate governance is a strategy for corporate performance. The study made use of both primary and secondary sources of data. The survey research method and the data analysis techniques comprised of simple percentages and chi-square derived from Kendal coefficient. It discovered that corporate governance is a strategy for corporate performance and the financial sector has failed to improve their performance using this strategy. It was recommended that the regulatory agencies should constantly review the acts that ensure good corporate governance and embark on constant monitoring in order to sanction any defaulting bank.     

What can Post‐Democracy tell us about TNCs and Extraterritorial Violations of Human Rights?

This article considers the problem of extraterritorial human rights violations committed by transnational corporations (TNCs), and draws on Crouch's framework in Post‐democracy to illustrate why the issue has proved so difficult for states to regulate. I begin by examining the problem of corporate regulation more generally, and set out Crouch's analysis to show why and how corporations have become so influential. The second section considers the area of business and human rights, and explains why there is ‘a governance gap’ in relation to extraterritorial human rights violations committed by corporations. The third section describes efforts at the international and domestic levels to regulate corporations in relation to this issue. It concludes that while new international principles and innovative hybrid schemes are playing a valuable role in norm creation and standard‐setting, the enforcement of these principles remains limited. Corporations have largely succeeded to date in their lobbying efforts to remain free of any direct obligations under international law.     

Asymmetric federalism and economic voting

Although federal arrangements adopt a multiplicity of forms across and within federations, this article suggests that some models of power division are better than others at enhancing clarity of responsibility and electoral accountability. This conclusion is the result of exploring responsibility attribution and economic voting in a state where decentralisation arrangements vary across regions: the Spanish State of Autonomies. Using electoral surveys and aggregated economic data for the 1982–2012 period, the empirical analysis shows that regional economic voting is most pronounced in regions where decentralisation design concentrated authority and resources at one level of government, whereas it is inexistent in regions where devolution followed a more intertwined model of power distribution. The implication of the empirical findings is that the specific design of intergovernmental arrangements is crucial to make electoral accountability work in federations.     

Who is responsible? The effect of clarity of responsibility on voter turnout

Does voters’ ability to discern who is responsible for policy outcomes affect voter turnout? Although particular institutional arrangements which influence this ability – known as clarity of responsibility – appear to affect how voters form retrospective judgements, existing literature is less informed about its role on voter turnout. This article argues that voters tend to turn out less if they cannot discern who is responsible for policy outcomes. This lack of clarity hinders the process of retrospective evaluations, makes the electoral stakes less profound, and dampens the voters’ political efficacy. Using 396 elections in 34 established democracies between 1960 and 2015, it is found that lower clarity of responsibility is associated with lower voter turnout. This study highlights the importance of clarity of responsibility, as it enhances democratic accountability, not only by encouraging retrospective voting, but also by increasing political participation.