28 March 2024. Beehive Seminar: Everywhere and Nowhere: The Global Corporation in International Law. Andrew Sanger.
The Beehive is the regular guest seminar series given by invited researchers on the question
of how corporations figure in their work.
Seminars will alternate between face to face seminars in Melbourne, and online seminars.
Thursday 28 March 2024. 2-3 pm AEDT
In-person
Room 1002 (access via Level 9 stairs)
Melbourne Law School
The central thesis of this project is that, from ignoring corporations, international law is a major contributor to a global operating environment for corporations (GOE), and that this environment is at the heart of some corporations’ capacity to be ‘everywhere and nowhere’: that is, the ability to wield influence across multiple jurisdictions while not being formally present in ways which would enable their legal regulation and responsibility.
The GOE analytic helps us to capture the dynamic struggle between corporations and other actors, and the different forms of transnationalising—iterations of globalisation—represented by these corporations and their global business models. Ultimately, the GOE has important consequences for regulation and responsibility, both in terms of determining who or what is responsible for ensuring regulation and responsibility, and for the capacity of corporations to organise their operations in a way that reduces or removes such regulation and responsibility. It is hoped that the analytic will allow us to see and think about various levers that might be effective for shaping corporate power or increasing corporate accountability and reducing harm.