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Corporate Commitment To International Law, Jay Butler
Corporate Commitment To International Law, Jay Butler
Faculty Publications
Corporations are increasingly important actors in international law. But vital questions underlying this development have long gone unanswered: How and why do corporations commit to international law?
This article constructs a general account of business interaction with international legal obligation and suggests that a gateway to demystifying this persistent puzzle lies in corporate opinio juris.
Corporate opinio juris describes a company's subscription to a rule of international law, even though the company is not technically bound by that rule. This subscription functions as a kind of pledge that, once made, has sway over the company and its peers and symbiotically …