International human rights obligations of corporations

Chapter Four begins by noting that, despite ongoing controversies over the international legal personality of corporations, there are no conceptual barriers to imposing obligations on them under public international law. It reviews various doctrinal arguments in favor of recognizing corporate human rights obligations and examines both international treaties and customary international law as potential sources of such duties. Applying textual and teleological interpretation, the chapter concludes that human rights treaties address states alone, binding only them. Turning to customary international law, it finds no sufficient evidence of the requisite state practice and opinio juris , pointing in particular to the decline of US Alien Tort Statute jurisprudence and the limited precedential weight of the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision in Nevsun . These findings – the scarcity of corporate obligations under international human rights law and the difficulties in attributing corporate conduct to states – underscore the need to develop the hybrid responsibility model.