Addressing regime collisions in scenarios of business-related human rights abuses

Addressing the context of regime collisions in which hybrid responsibility arises, Chapter Ten distinguishes between collisions within international law’s sectoral regimes and those between state and non-state regimes, focusing on the latter as a relatively underexplored phenomenon. Grievance mechanisms tasked with determining hybrid responsibility must address clashes between law and external normative systems, such as corporate codes or the new lex mercatoria . Mitigating such conflicts requires adopting procedural guarantees central to global administrative law, including participation, transparency, and reasoned decisions. The chapter then turns to the UNGPs as a polycentric governance model, exploring their approach to the quintessential business and human rights collision: the tension between state law and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights that is typical of business operations in challenging contexts. It further considers how hybrid responsibility can leverage spontaneous social sanctions triggered by failures to discharge the corporate responsibility. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the hybrid responsibility model must adopt a balanced approach: remaining open to pluralistic transformations in the international legal system while preserving the state’s central role and the value of more traditional forms of legalization.