Law Commons^™

Unacceptable Means: The Inspection Panel Actions On World Bank Forcible Resettlement, Lori Udall

Perspectives

This essay reviews the World Bank’s Inspection Panel’s work on cases involving involuntary resettlement. Since its Inception, the Panel has received 89 requests involving resettlement (over half of all cases) and has investigated 32. It traces Panel cases, lessons learned, and advisory reports on resettlement and livelihood restoration. Despite the growing evidence through the years of resettlement failures, the World Bank continues to violate its own safeguard policies and repeat the same omissions and mistakes in projects. The essay concludes with recommendations for empowering the Inspection Panel and for the Bank to move towards bottom-up community development that better addresses …

Imf Human Rights Accountability: A Pragmatic Way To Break The Deadlock, Aldo Caliari

Perspectives

In the three decades since the 1993 establishment of the World Bank Inspection Panel, almost all development finance institutions (DFIs) have established analogous panels, ombudsperson offices or other independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) to allow people who believe they have been harmed by the DFI’s activities to directly trigger processes of fact-finding, dispute resolution, and, if applicable, redress. The primary exception has been the International Monetary Fund.

"Use And Improve" Is My Accountability Mantra, Despite 30 Years Of Eye-Opening Disappointments, Natalie Bridgeman Fields

Perspectives

This essay finds justification for championing the continued existence, functioning and evolution of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs). An inside assessment of the thirty-year functioning of IAMs reveals that inadequate power and independence are severely hampering IAM efforts to hold actors accountable for harm. Simultaneously, IAMs can’t make progress without the underlying financial institutions reforming their incentive structures to reward harm prevention and remedy. Despite decades of systemic failure to deliver accountability, when exceptions happen, they are worth it and can be spectacular. With an influx of new climate-related funding expected at the financial institutions, exceptions need to become the rule. …

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 …

Corporations As Semi-States, Jay Butler

Faculty Publications

When Ebola came to West Africa in 2014, Liberia could not cope. The State’s already fragile public health infrastructure was largely ineffective in responding to the illness and preventing its spread. And, the World Health Organization’s support was slow and stilted. By contrast, Firestone, a tire company that operates a vast rubber plantation in Liberia and runs its own hospital for 80,000 employees, family dependents, and persons in neighboring localities, responded to the virus much more effectively.

This Article uses Firestone’s Ebola response as an entry point to study a phenomenon too frequently overlooked. Many for-profit firms that maintain operations …

Book Review: Global Lawmakers: International Organizations In The Crafting Of World Markets By Susan Block-Lieb And Terence C. Halliday, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

Susan Block-Lieb and Terence Halliday gradually build up an empirically grounded, meticulously realized argument that individual lawmakers matter. When one allows facts to inform theory rather than the other way around, the authors show, what becomes clear is that individual lawmakers are not just governmental delegates, but a whole variety of professionals, industry association representatives, and others with some stake in the lawmaking process. These actors work not just through formal processes, but also through an array of informal ones. Most importantly, their presence matters to the content of the legal norms that take hold around the world. The book …

Business, Human Rights And The Iba Climate Justice Report, Sara Seck, Michael Slattery

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The 2014 Climate Justice Report by the International Bar Association (IBA) makes many recommendations designed to contribute to the fight against climate change. One important step forward is its explicit recognition of the responsibility of business to respect human rights affected by climate change. This commentary explores the extent to which the IBA’s approach to this issue aligns with the business responsibility to respect human rights as described in the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The commentary also considers other international standards that incorporate business responsibilities for human rights in order to determine whether sufficient …

Persuasion Treaties, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

All treaties formalize promises made by national parties. Yet there is a fundamental difference between two kinds of treaty promise. This difference divides all treaties into two categories: treaties that govern the behavior of state parties and their agents fall in one category; treaties in the second category—those I call “persuasion” treaties—commit state parties to changing the behavior of non-state actors as well. The difference is important because the compliance problems for the two sets of treaties sharply diverge. Persuasion treaties merit our systematic attention because they are both theoretically and practically significant. In areas such as international environmental affairs, …

Criminalizing Corporate Killing: The Irish Approach, Bruce Carolan

Articles

The debate on criminal corporate liability in the United States might benefit from a comparative perspective: How have other countries treated the criminal liability of corporate entities? This benefit might be enhanced by focusing on a country with a similar legal heritage to the United States—a country with a common law legal system inherited from the British. And, it would help if that country were concurrently examining the issue of criminal corporate liability. Interesting questions might include: What issues dominate the debate? How are issues of punishment, reparations, and rehabilitation handled? Is a legislative approach contemplated? The purpose of this …

The Effect Of Economic Integration With China On The Future Of American Corporate Law, Joseph Vining

Law & Economics Working Papers

China's development into a world economic power and its continuing integration with the United States economy raise the question whether China's own history and the socialist context of its domestic corporate law may affect the meaning of business terms in use both internationally and in American domestic corporate law. Of particular interest is the question whether China's entry and impact may blunt the late-twentieth century effort in the United States to change the legal sense of the purpose of an American business corporation.

Corporate Law In The Shanghai People's Courts, 1992-2008: Judicial Autonomy In A Contemporary Authoritarian State, Nicholas C. Howson

Law & Economics Working Papers

In late 2005 China adopted a largely rewritten Company Law that radically increased the role of courts. This study, based on a review of more than 1000 Company Law-related disputes reported between 1992 and 2008 and extensive interactions with PRC officials and sitting judges, evaluates how the Shanghai People’s Court system has fared over 15 years in corporate law adjudication. Although the Shanghai People’s Courts show generally increasing technical competence and even intimations of political independence, their path toward institutional autonomy is inconsistent. Through 2006, the Shanghai Court system demonstrated significantly increased autonomy. After 2006 and enactment of the new …

Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Imperative, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that Norway’s Corporate Board Quota Law (“CBQ”) fosters a productive symbiosis between the public and private spheres. Recent studies indicate that higher numbers of women in executive positions result in stronger rates of corporate return on equity (“ROE”). Countries with higher levels of women's political representation also tend to have higher levels of economic growth. Increasing women's workforce participation outside the home can drive overall economic growth. These factors prompted the CBQ's proponents to argue for the economic imperative of women's corporate leadership. The CBQ will not only ameliorate gender inequality, but will bring new life to …

Changing The Paradigm Of Stock Ownership From Concentrated Towards Dispersed Ownership? Evidence From Brazil And Consequences For Emerging Countries, Erica Gorga

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This paper analyzes micro-level dynamics of changes in ownership structures. It investigates a unique event: changes in ownership patterns currently taking place in Brazil. It builds upon empirical evidence to advance theoretical understanding of how and why concentrated ownership structures can change towards dispersed ownership.

Commentators argue that the Brazilian capital markets are finally taking off. The number of listed companies and IPOs in the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) has greatly increased. Firms are migrating to Bovespa’s special listing segments, which require higher standards of corporate governance. Companies have sold control in the market, and the stock market has …

Vultures Or Vanguards?: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile

All Faculty Scholarship

The market for sovereign debt differs from the market for corporate debt in several important ways including the risk of opportunistic default by sovereign debtors, the importance of political pressures, and the presence of international development organizations. Moreover, countries are subject to neither liquidation nor standardized processes of debt reorganization. Instead, negotiations between a sovereign debtor and its creditors lead to a voluntary restructuring of the sovereign's debt. One of the greatest difficulties in restructuring claims against sovereign debtors is balancing the interests of the majority of the creditors with those of minority creditors. Holdout creditors serve as a check …