The Pink Elephant in the Corner of the Room that Nobody Wants to Acknowledge: The Dichotomy of Multinational Corporations, Instruments of Foreign Policy, Development, and Impediments to Corporate Criminal Prosecutions for Gross Human and Humanitarian Rights Violations

Abstract

The accompanying Article provides a comprehensive analysis of the debate over whether multinational corporations are socially responsible for advocating human and humanitarian rights in their foreign jurisdictions of operation. Furthermore, this Article will address the protections from human and humanitarian rights criminal prosecution multinational corporations enjoy under their complex network of business model, logistical, and managerial infrastructure. The issues will be addressed and discussed giving the pros and cons of a current lack of International Criminal Law oversight over multinational corporations. The significance of human and humanitarian rights criminal violations by multinational corporations in their foreign jurisdictions of operations are illustrated by a discussion of several cases analyzed in this Article. This Article drives new analytical avenues in areas of International Law concerning corporate social responsibility abroad. From The Slavery Convention and The Nuremburg Trials to the ongoing present, an examination will be made of the avenues open for criminally prosecuting multinational corporations that commit criminal violations of international law human rights and humanitarian law. From domestic conditions on the grounds of these foreign jurisdictions of operations to a multinational corporation’s home state’s domestic laws, an examination will be made into what impediments prevent criminal prosecutions of multinational corporations. Inquiries concerning the economic theories and the broad public policy context in which governments exercises their regulatory powers over multinational corporations will be discussed. Furthermore, we will examine the multinational corporation’s consequences of leveraging strategy for fundamental conceptions of economic success promoted by assuring a laissez-faire or aiding and abetting attitude within their foreign jurisdictions of operation. In brief, the Article contributes a framework for discussion centered around resolving critical, but hidden public policy challenges regarding the role and responsibilities of multinational corporations in their foreign jurisdictions and whether they should be held criminally liable at international law for gross breaches of the domestic populations human and humanitarian rights.