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89 Tul. L. Rev. 603 (2014-2015)

handle is hein.journals/tulr89 and id is 649 raw text is: Rethinking Corporate Human Rights Accountability Pammela Q. Saunders* The standard account of corporate human ights accountability assumes that corporate entities, rather than individual corporate officers or employees, am the optimal targets of regulatory litigation. ThMs assumption has led human ights advocates to despair over recent court decisions that make it increasingly difficult to bring suit against corporations for human tights violations, In light of these decisions (and similar bariers to suits against corporate entities in some otherjurisdictions around the world), human nghis advocates find themselves at a crossroads. Will litgants focus on new legal theories or on bringing their claims in new fora that offer better chances forprosecuting claims directly against corporate entities? O, will they instead or in addition, pursue claims againstindic'dual corporate agents? While the standard account would suggest the former that answer may be neither realistic nor correct. In fac the arguments underlying the conclusion that insttutional liability is essential were developed outside of the human rights context To be sure, many of the same goals that underlie human nghts litigation also underlie the traditional, domestic corporate litigation context in which these aiguments onginated. Yet, a more complex set ofmotivations are involvedin theproect ofholding multinational corporatons accountable for their complicity in human nghts violations. Failing to consider the nontradi ional goals that underlie human ights litigation leads to an incomplete account regarding the importance of different forms of liability in this context Tus Aricle develops a typology of goals underlying corporate human rights litigation and then 'atches these goals to the benefits and drawbacks of individual versus institutional liability It concludes that there am significant benefits to naming individual corporate actors as defendants that have been largely overlooked. Far from being the disaster that it has been depicted to be, h'tigation targeting mdividual corporate actors has great potential to benefit victims andto serve as an important addition to the regulatory toollt I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 605 II. CORPORATE HUMAN RIGHrS LITIGATION AND INSTITUTIONAL LIABILITY: A BRIEF OVERVIEW ......................... 612 A. The Rise of Corpomte Human Rights Litigation ............. 613 B. Advocating for Institutional Liability ............................... 617 C The Future of Corpomate Human Rights Litgaion .......... 620 1. State Common Law Claims ...................................... 621 * © 2015 Pammela Q. Saunders. Assistant Professor, Thomas R. Kline School of Law, Drexel University. For helpful comments and suggestions, I would like to thank Adam Benforado, Richard Frankel, Alex Geisinger, Laurence Heifer, and Rachel L6pez. This Article benefitted greatly from the helpful feedback I received at the Washington and Lee School of Law's Transnational Governance Solutions to International Business Problems Roundtable and the Arizona State University Legal Scholars Conference. Chris Bailes, Candice Kearney, Jason Kuntz, and Meredith Lowry provided research assistance, and, as usual, John Canaan in the Drexel Legal Research Center provided excellent research support. 603

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