International Legal Personality of Transnational Corporations – Any Chance for the Theoretical Shift with Respect to a Legally Binding Instrument on Human Rights and TNCs?

Abstract

Summary Multinational enterprises or transnational corporations are big and influential actors on international scene. Their economic activities might have unfortunately a negative impact on human rights or environment. Current international law does not have any concrete and satisfactory answer to such situation of lacking direct substantial human rights obligations with respect to transnational corporations and corresponding procedural mechanism. Often, this situation is substantiated by missing or unclear concept of international legal personality of those entities. The present article presents international legal personality of transnational corporations from the perspective of the Legally biding instrument on human rights and TNCs drafted by inter-governmental working group. After portraying general features of international legal personality, the author tends to conciliate basic theoretical concept with the TNCs situation. Then the author presents a deep analysis of the Legally binding instrument and comes to the conclusions of maturing international legal personality of transnational corporations.