From Institutional Misalignments to Socially Sustainable Governance: The Guiding Principles for the Implementation of the United Nations' "Protect, Respect and Remedy" and the Construction of InterbySystemic Global Governance

McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific, Sacramento, CA, Northwest Hall, Room S4 - S5

Moderator: Franklin Gevurtz, Distinguished Professor and Scholar and Director, Global Center for Business & Development, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law

This panel will examine the incorporation of international human rights norms into state and national corporate law and principles of corporate governance. The “Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework” adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2008 renders myopic the notion that national and sub-national laws on corporate governance and the liabilities of corporate officials can ignore international human rights norms, since this framework invokes both the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business, through appropriate policies, regulation, and adjudication and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights by acting with due diligence to avoid infringing on the rights of others. The panel, however, will explore not only human rights norms implicated when corporations act in ways that infringe human rights, but also consider the application of such norms when governments infringe upon the human rights of corporations and their owners.