Traditional Legal Concepts under Fire? Business and Human Rights at the International, National and EU Levels

Abstract Over the past decade, business actors, in particular transnational corporations, have been increasingly called to respect human rights and environmental standards in their own operations and in their supply chains. However, the idea of obliging companies to respect human rights throughout their supply chains requires legal changes at international, EU and national levels that have proved hard to achieve. A common explanation for the slow progress in these areas is the strong lobbying of global economic players who successfully obstruct the necessary legal reforms. Conversely, the present contribution aims to show that one of the reasons for the slow progress in adopting the necessary legal reforms is that imposing such obligations on companies may challenge certain traditional legal concepts of international law, as well as the public, civil and criminal laws of many, if not most, countries around the world, and critically examines the response of different legal systems to these legal challenges.