Foreign Wrongs, Corporate Rights and the Arc of Transnational Law

Abstract

This peer-reviewed chapter reflects on the challenge and the aspiration of bringing transnational corporations (TNCs) more fully and coherently under the rule of international law. An extensive literature ruminates upon the dis-junction between the extant norms of our international legal order, many of which continue to cling to antiquated Westphalian-era suppositions, and the massive changes that have attended the ascendance of TNCs in the post-World War II era and the associated privatization of global authority and governance. The place of corporations in international law remains at once unclear and hotly contested as a matter of theory, doctrine and politics.