Dodge: Corporate Liability Under Customary International Law

William S. Dodge (Univ. of California - Hastings College of the Law) has posted Corporate Liability Under Customary International Law (Georgetown Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This contribution to a symposium on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. examines two ways of looking at the question of corporate liability under customary international law. It argues that the Second Circuit was wrong to ask whether a “norm of corporate liability” exists in the abstract and that the proper question is whether the particular norm at issue — torture, for example — applies to juridical persons. The essay notes that all of the norms actionable under the Alien Tort Statute prohibit certain acts, irrespective of the perpetrator, and explains that state practice applying norms to natural persons may generate customary international law binding on juridical persons unless there is some difference between natural and juridical persons relevant to the norm.