In-Person | Challenging Corporate Power Through Litigation

ILA lecture on 'Challenging Corporate Power Through Litigation – Status Quo in Germany and EU'

Speaker: Dr. Miriam Saage-Maaß (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights)

Chair: Dr Ugljesa Grusic (UCL Laws)

About the Lecture:

Litigation approaches to corporate accountability for human rights violations and environmental destruction over the last decades have focussed on singular, disastrous events of environmental degradation. Human Rights litigators around the world have developed legal precedents around parent company liability in the corporate group; liability of lead firms with regards to their supply chain; and criminal liability (aiding and abetting). Also, in Europe there is a rise in supply chain due diligence legislations.

While these developments are ground-breaking, so far the litigation efforts have remained singular pieces, typically against one corporate actor that is most clearly linked to the respective rights violations.

However, the systemic way in which corporate actors and their enablers are profiting from exploitation of nature and humans is not fully exposed by these approaches.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Miriam Saage-Maaß is a qualified lawyer and Legal Director at European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), where she had built up the Business and Human Rights Program. She has worked on various cases against corporations relating to exploitation of workers in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Furthermore, she is engaged in criminal proceedings against high-ranking managers for their involvement in international crimes, e.g. arms exports from Europe to Saudi Arabia.

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash