The Legal Liability of Transnational Corporations: Between Extraterritorial Obligations of States and Universal Justice

Abstract

The paper focuses on the possibilities of accountability of transnational companies, which operate in a “value chain” in different States and jurisdictions around the world. To this purpose, we propose a change in paradigm from solitary sovereignty to solidarity sovereignty, based on the duty of cooperation between the various state jurisdictions, in order to optimize the theoretical-practical understanding on the theme of extraterritoriality and universal justice. In the first part, the paper highlights the pertinence of the theme from a contemporary perspective. In the second part, the paper proposes a liability framework for transnational companies based on the duty of cooperation, which recognizes that this duty applies to both home States, where the large corporations are domiciled, as well as the host States.