International Human Rights & Corporate Accountability

This panel addressed the current legal environment around forced labor, trafficking, and slavery in the food supply chain. Food sectors including chocolate and seafood have been found to have endemic problems with slavery and trafficking.

This panel addressed the current legal landscape and proposed technological and practical solutions to hold wealthy corporations accountable for what is happening in their supply chain.

Panelists

• Beth Van Schaack, Stanford Law School
• Paul Hoffman, UCI Law School, Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes LLP
• Jesus M. Pizarro Rodriguez, Heifer International
• Kishanthi Parella, Washington and Lee University

Moderator

• Michael Roberts, UCLA School of Law

MCLE Reading

• Respondent Brief, Cargill v Doe, Supreme Court of the United States
• Respondent Brief, Nestle v Doe, Supreme Court of the United States
• Reply Brief, Cargill v Doe, Supreme Court of the United States
• Reply Brief, Nestle v Doe, Supreme Court of the United States
• Petitioner Brief, Cargill v Doe, Supreme Court of the United States
• Petitioner Brief, Nestle v Doe, Supreme Court of the United States
• “Outsourcing Corporate Accountability” by Kishanthi Parella

Corporations sometimes facilitate crimes across country borders. This panel examined recent and ongoing cases regarding criminal activity that is aided and abetted from abroad by corporations.

In particular, the panel discussed recent transmissions to the ICC regarding war crimes; aiding and abetting jurisprudence in various legal systems around the world; the transnational laws around human trafficking; and holding corporations accountable civilly for funding paramilitary groups.

Panelists

• Agnieszka Fryszman, Cohen Milstein
• Miriam Saage-Maaß, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
• Monalisa, International Human Rights Lawyer
• Marissa Vahlsing, EarthRights International

Moderator

• Cathy Sweetser, Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law

MCLE Reading

• Congresspersons’ Amicus ISO Respondents, Supreme Court of the United States
• “Legal Interventions and Transnational Alliances in the Ali Enterprises Case” by Miriam Saage-Maaß

Corporate Capture, Corporate Influence, and International Human Rights Law: Multinational corporations have continued to assert increasing influence on states and their decision making.

How does the influence of corporations on state power affect the creation and enforcement of human rights law? How can countries hold corporations accountable when the corporations are larger than the countries by an order of magnitude?

Panelists

• Anita Ramasastry, University of Washington School of Law, United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights
• Surya Deva, City University of Hong Kong
• Dominic Renfrey, Center for Constitutional Rights

Moderator

• Charity Ryerson, Corporate Accountability Lab

MCLE Reading

• “From ‘Business or Human Rights’ to ‘Business and Human Rights’: What Next?” by Surya Deva
• “Is There a Right to Be Free from Corruption?” by Anita Ramasastry

Workshop Participants

• Misha Nayak-Oliver, Just Fair UK:
  Corporate Activity Compounding Intersectional Inequities: Rethinking AI Regulation to Protect ESCR in the UK
• Dorothy Vinsky, LLM Candidate at UCLA School of Law:
  Lessons from Standard Oil for Facebook and Google
• Scott Shackelford, Indiana University Kelley School of Business with,
• Isak Nti Asare, Indiana University Bloomington, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies with,
• Rachel Dockery, Indiana University Maurer School of Law with,
• Angie Raymond, Indiana University Maurer School of Law with,
• Alexandra Sergueeva, Indiana University Bloomington:
  Should We Trust a Black Box to Safeguard Human Rights? A Comparative Analysis of AI Governance

Workshop Moderator

• Alex Alben, UCLA School of Law

Workshop Participants

• Alveena Shah, Dechert LLP:
  Leasing the Rain: Water, Privatization, and Human Rights
• Timothy Webster, Western New England University School of Law:
  South Korea Shatters the Paradigm: Corporate Liability, Historical Accountability, and the Second World War
• Mara González Souto, JD Candidate at UCLA School of Law:
  Through the ATS Door, Now What?: The Prevalence of MNC Misconduct, Disguise & Manipulation

Workshop Moderator

• Alex Wang, UCLA School of Law

Workshop Participants

• Marina Aksenova, IE Law School:
  Three Potential Problems of Establishing Corporate Facilitation under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
• Jernej Letnar Černič, European School of Law, New University:
  Enforcement Mechanisms Under the Potential United Nations Business and Human Rights Treaty: An Exploration

Workshop Moderator

• Richard Steinberg, UCLA School of Law

The growing concerns regarding corporate social responsibility surrounding digital privacy, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and the monetization of personal information has begun to gain ground in the legal field.

What are the legal and political limits on how corporations govern themselves and the data they have collected? How realistically can international law prevent and mitigate human rights violations due to new and future technologies?

Panelists

• April Falcon Doss, Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP
• Amba Kak, AI Now Institute at NYU
• Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch
• Wojciech Wiewiórowski, European Data Protection Supervisor

Moderator

• Byron Tau, Wall Street Journal

MCLE Reading

• Maya Wang, ‘The Robots are Watching Us,’
• What is the GDPR, the EU’s new data protection law?
• Amba Kak, ed., “Regulating Biometrics: Global Approaches and Urgent Questions” AI Now Institute, September 1 2020

The space race between the West and East in the middle of the twentieth century resulted in a number of technological developments and captivated the imagination of a generation.

Now, in the twenty-first century, the space race has become increasingly privatized, and private companies—rather than the government—have begun to propose their own agendas for humanity’s future in space. Elon Musk wants SpaceX to take private citizens to Mars. NASA wants to partially privatize the International Space Station. Jeff Bezos founded corporation Blue Origin, which envisions “millions of people living and working in space.”

As these private firms expand their activities in space and new enterprises enter the market, what legal frameworks should guide and constrain their behavior? How can international law, including existing international human rights law, hold corporate actors accountable in space?

Panelists

• Steven Freeland, University of Western Sydney
• Mahulena Hofmann, University of Luxembourg
• Makena Young, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Moderator

• Rachel Crane, CNN

MCLE Reading

• Steven Freeland, (2020), ‘The limits of law : challenges to the global governance of space activities’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol 153, no 1 , pp 89 – 101
• Center for Strategic and International Studies, Space Threat Assessment 2020

Multilateral and unilateral sanctions are a frequent tool of states to halt access to the international financial system of human rights violators. Corporations play a role in both the perpetration and penalization of international human rights violations.

How effective are sanctions as an accountability mechanism, and what is the role of financial institutions? Have sanctions for human rights abuses as part of international or bilateral trade agreements been effective tools for enforcement? What potential do international human rights mechanisms offer, and how can this best be realized?

Panelists

• John Prendergast, The Sentry
• Anasuya Syam, Human Trafficking Legal Center
• Scott Johnston, Human Rights First
• Luis Moreno Ocampo, Getnick & Getnick LLP, former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

Moderator

• Richard Steinberg, UCLA School of Law

MCLE Reading

• George A. Lopez, ‘Enforcing Human Rights through Economic Sanctions,’ in Dina Shelton (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of International Human Rights Law, 2013
• Maarten Smeets, ‘Can economic sanctions be effective?’, WTO Staff Working Paper, No. ERSD-2018-03