Anna Aseeva, From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Liability: A Socio‑Legal Study of Corporate Liability in Global Value Chains (Oxford: Hart, 2021), 244 pp

Abstract

Corporate power continues to grow and impact upon our livelihoods and the environment. Myriad concepts have been introduced to describe the prevention or mitigation of different types of corporate irresponsibility and harm – including accountability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability. Into this mix, Anna Aseeva introduces corporate social liability (CSL), an innovative lens to create strategic pathways to alleviate corporate harm. Aseeva centres her socio-legal analysis on the complex leviathan of global value chains (GVCs). GVCs have become the normalized method of production, and now account for over 70 per cent of global trade.1 The book’s thesis lies in the assertion that GVCs operate as ‘connectivity norms’ of global economic relations, which in turn generate systems of economically dependent but legally independent entities between head corporations and periphery firms.2 This dichotomy results in the corporation at the apex of any GVC remaining practically immune to liability. To tackle this immunity, Aseeva argues that international lawyers require new strategies. CSL covers ‘the extent to which head corporations can be held liable for harm, including that which arises out of acts and omissions by their economically dependent entities’.3 CSL contains constitutive elements of both corporate liability for the effects of GVC production and the corporate responsibility to re-distribute, which incorporates, amongst other issues, health and safety standards for workers, and environmental protections. Notably, Aseeva also alludes to CSL’s temporal and aspirational dimensions, operating between current formulations of corporate liability, and as a lens through which to see future systemic changes that will be necessary to transform the global political economy and society.4 The book is organized in four parts. Part I (chapters 1–2) introduces the book’s approach and methods, in addition to providing us with a contextual account of CSR and the proliferation of GVCs. Part II (chapters 3–4) analyses the regulation of corporate responsibility from national, post-national and international law perspectives. Part III (chapters 5–6) investigates recent legal routes to liability for head corporations in GVCs, and Part IV (chapters 7–9) sets out a systemic approach to whether and how CSL could be adopted. Chapter 1 details the CSL approach and situates the book in the socio-legal method through the complementary doctrinal analysis in English, French and US jurisdictions, and a