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What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: Human Rights, Shareholder Activism And, Eric A. Engle

Eric A. Engle

Though in theory shareholders have several ways to influence their corporation's behavior, in practice they generally cannot. This may explain the absence of literature on binding governance mechanisms to protect human rights: remedies which theoretically exist are ineffective in practice. To remedy this problem, this article recommends that the few existing mechanisms should be used whenever possible, reformed to become better, and that the SEC should require companies to report on their human rights, environmental, and labor elations practices because that information is material to investment decisions. The risks can be shown in terms of cold cash: corporations which violate …