Chambers & Martin: Reimagining Corporate Accountability: Moving Beyond Human Rights Due Diligence

Rachel Chambers (Univ. of Connecticut - Business) & Jena Martin (West Virginia Univ. - Law) have posted Reimagining Corporate Accountability: Moving Beyond Human Rights Due Diligence (New York University Journal of Law & Business, Vol. 18, no. 3, Summer 2022). Here's the abstract:

The global movement towards the adoption of human rights due diligence laws is gaining momentum. Starting in France, moving to Germany, and now at the European Union level, lawmakers are heeding the call to mandate that companies conduct human rights due diligence throughout their global operations. The situation in the United States is very different: although ESG (environmental, social, and governance) has received increasing national attention, there is currently no law that mandates corporate human rights due diligence.

Recognizing this disparity and acknowledging the specific context for ESG-related issues in the United States, we consider how the United States could provide clarity and direction to corporate America and global leadership on business and human rights. Our assessment reveals that while due diligence models have rapidly become the global standard for increasing corporate human rights accountability, there is concern that the legislative frameworks being adopted in Europe fail to live up to their promise.

We assess a bold and novel legislative proposition for the United States: a human rights due diligence law that is patterned after the influential anti-bribery statute, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The proposal—which we coin as the due diligence + model—provides a unique response to corporate human rights abuses by combining an outright prohibition on certain serious human rights violations with due diligence and record-keeping obligations. We offer a first-of-its-kind analysis that provides crucial insight to lawmakers in the United States and around the world as they seek to craft new regulatory regimes for corporate accountability.