Courses

    This seminar provides an opportunity to explore the role of multinational enterprise in the process of supporting, contesting and shaping the enforcement of social and economic rights as provided under international law with a focus on implications for global health. The seminar will first examine the organizational and administrative features of multinational enterprise especially in developing nations. The seminar will next examine what position multinational corporations occupy in the framework of international human rights. Are multinational companies, like other private actors, rights-holders under international law entitled to assert claims against sovereign governments as duty-bearers? Does the scale or nature of the enterprise require it to take on any duties in addition to rights? A number of illustrative industry case studies will be used such as petroleum, pharmaceuticals and tobacco. We will examine pharmaceutical manufacturers' attempts to protect drug prices as well as expand access to medicines; tobacco manufacturers' efforts to protect the ability to advertise their products; and, energy producers' policies toward both local labor and global climate change. The seminar will use the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as well as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change as key legal instruments in the analysis. We will carefully consider the meaning of the right to health as well as competing legal conceptions of "corporate personhood" in international law. This class is strongly recommended for those interested in the intersection between international law and corporate law. Students should be prepared for daily participation in class discussion and will be evaluated on the basis of an 8 hour take home exam posing a problem based on the relationship between multinational enterprise and international human rights.