Slaves to the Bottom Line: The Corporate Role in Slavery from Nuremberg to Now

Abstract

Evidence of the inadequacy of our current legal system in dealing with the corporate role in slavery can be found on the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court from 2015. Tucked in among the blockbuster cases about abortion, affirmative action, and political corruption in the 2015–2016 Supreme Court term was a little‐noticed certiorari petition from Nestlé U.S.A. asking, essentially, to be dismissed from a case that alleged the company had aided and abetted the slavery of children in Côte d’Ivoire. One of the troubling things about Nestlé U.S.A.’s asking to be let out of the suit was that its legal argument was not an outrageous request given recent Supreme Court cases that make it nearly impossible for human rights plaintiffs to bring successful suits against multinational corporations in U.S. courts.

This Article argues that, at a minimum, U.S. courts need to be reopened as proper fora for hearing civil human rights cases brought against multinational corporations that do significant business in the United States, regardless of where the harm occurred. The reason that American courts should be reopened is not just to give financial relief to victims, but also to change the calculus within corporations to make slave labor as financially unattractive as possible. But, further, this Article argues that we need to get back to the moral clarity of the Nuremberg trials of the industrialists and have the fortitude to actually prosecute corporate actors that knowingly perpetuate slavery.

Keywords: Slave, Slavery, Forced Labor, Forced Labour, Farben, Krupp, Flick, Nuremberg Trials, Nuremberg Tribunals, Nazi, Holocaust, Auschwitz, Dr. Mengele, Bayer, Nestle, Supreme Court, Jurisdiction