29 May 2025. Towards a Theory on the International Legal Personality of Corporations with Christiane Ahlborn
Photo credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
2 - 3 pm
In-person
While international organizations have long been recognized as international legal persons, corporations remain in a legal grey zone. Still, the situation of international organizations and corporations also shows certain parallels. Attributing international legal status to powerful non-state actors threatens the status of states as primary subjects of international law that exercise ‘inherently sovereign’ functions’ and the ‘publicness’ of public international law per se. In this seminar, I aim to contribute to the theory of personhood in international law by focusing on the enormous powers that corporations have exercised on the transnational and international plane, shaping our era into a Technocene. Corporations already have considerable rights in international law, which they exercise below the radar of general international law. I will suggest moving towards a theory on the legal personality of corporations in international law, which combines insights from domestic law theories on corporate personhood with those on statehood and international organizationhood.