Corporate Social Responsibility

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This course provides an introduction into the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in its legal dimensions. At the core of the debate about CSR lies the question to what extent companies are responsible, legal or otherwise, to respect and further societal interests that were originally viewed as a core responsibility of states. This entails questions on whether companies have responsibilities or obligations to respect human rights (the emerging field of Business & Human Rights), are expected to contribute to sustainable development (such as the involvement of the private sector in the sustainable development goals) or can be held responsible for contributing to climate change. Increasingly, also other issue areas, such as responsibility in the digital space or global tax compliance, are discussed from a CSR perspective.

To add to the complexity, not only the substance of CSR (what are companies responsible for) is a matter of debate, but also its form is highly contested. On the one hand, one can interpret a variety of legal norms that apply to companies from a CSR perspective. Such legal norms range from national law to international hard and soft law as well as private regulation although these rules are not always explicitly referred to as being related to CSR. On the other hand, existing laws are not sufficient to fully capture the concept of CSR. The newer regulatory developments suggest that we are moving, indeed, into an era where CSR becomes a basis for increasing legal regulation and changing the forms of regulation, such as sustainability reporting rules or due diligence.

In this course, we adopt an understanding of CSR that considers it as being implicit in legal norms that impose obligations on companies to consider societal interests as well as serving as a normative notion that demands stronger laws on the social responsibility in national, EU and international law. In regard to the latter, we acknowledge that there are different positions that can be taken as to the form that is best and most effective. We have therefore selected the course literature in a manner that it reflects the breadth of different positions in the current debate.

As you may see from this description, the concept of CSR can serve as an excellent heuristic for studying how law is affected by and affects itself globalization, in particular related to globalization from the perspective of private (corporate) actors. It can show the potential and limits of national law to regulate globally operating companies with related struggles on extraterritorial regulation. A CSR perspective on international law can also shed light into the possibility, desirability and limitations of creating international hard or soft law to govern corporations and CSR is a core notion used to document the evolution of transnational law and global private regulation that, while not being legal in the traditional sense of a state-based understanding of the law, have an impact on corporate behaviour and are thus regulatory.

In the light of the compulsory character of this course for the corporate and commercial law and sustainability specialisations in the master programmes (Globalization and Law, European Law School, Dutch Law), the course focuses centrally on the interaction between corporations and CSR understood from the perspectives of corporate sustainability and business and human rights. The course will cover the most important laws and regulatory initiatives on corporate sustainability on a national, EU and international level and discuss how legal regulation on CSR approaches the transformation of globally operating companies into complex corporate group structures and supply-chains.