Description
This Dossier XXI of the ICC Institute of World Business Law explores how compliance with environment and human rights requirements may trigger legal responses based on the various concepts of international public policy. On the one hand, there is an unprecedented movement towards an intensification of corporate governance and mandatory legal rules – international, regional and domestic – with respect to environmental (including climate-related) and human rights protection. On the other hand, these legal rules may be of such imperiousness as to qualify as international public policy, but probably not all of them with the same intensity, not independently of such factors as the responsible behaviour or the damages they seek to apprehend, and not without consideration of the prevailing legal principles in the country where they arise. As a result, judges and arbitrators should not be expected to respond in all such legal situations with a same level of curiosity and willingness to take action.
The contributions in this Dossier are in all respects remarkable in view of the very new, and even prospective, problems they tackle. They start with establishing how compliance, the environment and human rights have become increasingly growing concerns for business and drawing a broad picture of the most striking, and largely converging, developments in both corporate governance and substantive law. These issues are then discussed on the ground of legal principles, both from theoretical and jurisdictional points of view, especially the various and often conflicting trends concerning international public policy. The same questions are subsequently considered from a more practical point of view, that of the roles of judges and arbitrators in environment and human rights-related transnational disputes. Last approached are the problems raised by the essential question of the effectiveness of compliance in environment and human rights.
The contributors are all renowned academics and practitioners among the best in the vast array of legal areas involved and in many different places around the world. Thanks to them, and to their efforts at ascertaining the current state of things in their respective areas and at suggesting prospective approaches for the future, this Dossier has every reason to stand as reference for many years to come.
