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Implementing the New UN Corporate Human Rights Framework: Implications for Corporate Law, Governance, and Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Peter Muchlinski
Peter Muchlinski*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies
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Abstract:

The UN Framework on Human Rights and Business comprises the State’s duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and the duty to remedy abuses. This paper focuses on the corporate responsibility to respect. It considers how to overcome obstacles, arising out of national and international law, to the development of a legally binding corporate duty to respect human rights. It is argued that the notion of human rights due diligence will lead to the creation of binding legal duties and that principles of corporate and tort law can be adapted to this end. Furthermore, recent legal developments accept an “enlightened shareholder value” approach allowing corporate managers to consider human rights issues when making decisions. The responsibility to respect involves adaptation of shareholder based corporate governance towards a more stakeholder oriented approach and could lead to the development of a new, stakeholder based, corporate model.

Keywords

businesshuman rightscorporationscorporate governancemultinational enterprises
Type
Special Issue: Human Rights and Business
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 145 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2012

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