Focus: Business and Human Rights

• Kulick, Andreas 1

Abstract

Do corporations have human rights? This article addresses, to date, a rather understudied issue of the corporations and human rights debate: whether and to what extent corporations can be bearers of human rights, with a focus on the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence. In a nutshell, it argues that what subsequently will be called ‘the individualistic approach’ – that is, purporting that the corporate form itself cannot be bearer of human rights – counter-intuitively leads to almost unfettered human rights entitlements of corporations. Thereby, this article provides a critique of both established corporate law thinking as well as the dominant view in human rights scholarship. Instead, it is submitted that taking the corporate form seriously and granting it some entitlements to some extent under a functionalist theory emerges as the preferable approach – theoretically, doctrinally and practically. The article draws on ECtHR jurisprudence, general legal as well as corporate law theory and comparative constitutional law in order to corroborate its argument.

• 1Privatdozent (venia legendi), Senior Research Fellow, University of Tübingen, Germany; visiting professor (Lehrstuhlvertreter), University of Marburg, Germany (summer semester 2021). Email: andreas.kulick@uni-tuebingen.de.