Business & Human Rights Law: Diverging Trends in the United States and France

Abstract

The application of human rights standards to the activities of transnational corporations has become an increasingly prominent debate in the international law and business arenas. As the international community moves forward in elaborating a framework for accountability for corporate acts, it will be crucial that this framework reflect the existing differences between legal systems in applying human rights law to corporations' operations. This article sets out the differences between the United States and France as two examples of fundamentally different approaches in addressing corporate compliance of human rights. Ultimately, these two different state approaches towards the role of business, government interventionism, stockholders and shareholders, and international law, should be taken into account in tailoring a true international consensus on corporate responsibility, accepted by both sides of the Atlantic.

Keywords: Business and Government Policy, Human Rights, International Affairs/Globalization, International Law, Corporate Social Responsibility, France, UN Norms, Corporate Accountability

JEL Classification: K32, K33