Editor’s note: Maisie Biggs recently graduated with a MSc in Global Crime, Justice and Security from the University of Edinburgh and holds a LLB from University College London. She is currently an intern with the Doing Business Right project at the Asser Institute in The Hague. She previously worked for International Justice Mission in South Asia and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) in Amsterdam.

“No one who comes to these courts asking for justice should come in vain. The right to come here is not confined to Englishmen. It extends to any friendly foreigner. He can seek the aid of our courts if he desires to do so. You may call this ‘forum shopping’ if you please, but if the forum is England, it is a good place to shop in both for the quality of the goods and the speed of service.”

Lord Denning in The Atlantic Star [1973] 1 QB 364 (CA) 381–2

The United Kingdom Supreme Court today has handed down Vedanta Resources PLC and another (Appellants) v Lungowe and others (Respondents) [2019] UKSC 20, a significant judgement concerning parent company liability and the determination of jurisdiction for these claims. Practically, it now means for the first time a UK company will face trial and potentially accountability in their home jurisdiction for environmental harms associated with operations of foreign subsidiaries. 

This is a closely-watched jurisdiction case concerning a UK parent company’s liability arising out of the actions of its foreign subsidiary. The claimants are 1826 Zambian citizens from the Chingola region of the Copperbelt Province. This group action is against UK-domiciled Vedanta Resources PLC and its subsidiary KCM, a second defendant which is incorporated in Zambia. The original claims concern discharges from the KCM-owned Nchanga mine since 2005 which have allegedly caused pollution and environmental damage leading to personal injury, damage to property and loss of income, amenity and enjoyment of land. 

Following the initiation of this claim, in 2015 Vedanta and KCM challenged the jurisdiction of the English courts, however Coulson J dismissed their applications. The Court of Appeal then upheld the dismissal of those applications, so the defendants appealed to the Supreme Court. (See our previous blog on the case here).

The Supreme Court today denied the appeal by Vedanta Resources and KCM, and allowed the claim to proceed to merits in England. The Court made it clear the real risk that the claimants would not obtain access to substantial justice in Zambia was the deciding factor in the case. The Court denied there was an abuse of EU law by the claimants using Vedanta as a jurisdictional hook to sue both the parent company and subsidiary in England, and the claimants succeeded in demonstrating there was a “real triable issue”, nonetheless Zambia was held to be the “proper place” for the case. However, because the Court supported the finding of the first instance judge regarding the risks faced by claimants in accessing substantial justice in Zambia, the appeal was denied, and the case can proceed in England. 

This is a significant judgement, as it now means for the first time a UK company will face trial and potentially accountability in their home jurisdiction for environmental harms associated with operations of foreign subsidiaries. Lord Briggs delivered the judgement on four major issues: the potential for abuse of EU law; whether there was a real triable issue against Vedanta; whether England is the proper place for these proceedings; and whether there was a real risk that substantial justice would not be obtainable in that foreign jurisdiction. 

Why is this significant? For those following this case, and the appeals of Okpabi & Ors v Royal Dutch Shell Plc & Anor (Rev 1) [2018] EWCA Civ 191 and AAA & Ors v Unilever Plc & Anor [2018] EWCA Civ 1532 in the English courts, there are two major findings in this judgement that will likely impact future cases concerning parent company liability. Firstly, the reasoning behind the finding of a “real triable issue” between a foreign claimant and UK parent company, and secondly the primacy the Supreme Court placed on the significance of access to justice as a jurisdictional hook for claims in England.

A. Finding of a “real triable issue” between a foreign claimant and UK parent company

Previous major cases decided in lower courts have fallen at this hurdle. The courts in Okpabi and AAA v Unilever both allowed jurisdictional appeals because they determined there was no real triable issue between the claimants and the UK parent company. In this case, Lord Briggs characterised the test as simply “whether Vedanta sufficiently intervened in the management of the Mine owned by its subsidiary KCM to have incurred, itself (rather than by vicarious liability), a common law duty of care to the claimants [44].”

Four major developments allowed this to happen; firstly, claimants can more heavily rely on the potential of future disclosure of internal defendant documents; secondly, the Chandler criteria ought not to be a ‘straitjacket’ for finding a parent company exercised control; thirdly, that the size of a company’s operation does not dilute a duty of care, and finally that group-wide policies and guidelines alleging group control are potentially sufficient as a basis to argue a triable case of parent company control. Interestingly, all of these points (without explicitly saying so) went against the Court of Appeal’s judgement in Okpabi. 

1. The potential for evidence to emerge upon disclosure

The finding of a “real triable issue” has been a challenge in past cases because particular facts must be determined before the disclosure of the defence’s documents, and there runs a risk of a ‘mini-trial’ ensuing based on limited evidence. This may be of interest to lawyers and courts in other jurisdictions which do not have the same disclosure requirements: the English courts have had to establish how to best ascertain the likelihood of a duty of care based on only publicly-available documents. 

In past, claimants were told they could not base their claim on merely the potential for more evidence to emerge upon disclosure. Lord Justice Simon previously found in Okpabi in the Court of Appeal that “[a]lthough, the claimants make a further point that [the presented evidence] is illustrative of what may emerge on disclosure, the difficulty is that jurisdiction is founded on a properly arguable cause of action and not on what may (or may not) become a properly arguable cause of action [122].” Sir Geoffrey Vos agreed, saying “I might mention in closing that I thought throughout the hearing of the appeal that the court had a responsibility in a case of this kind not to strive to find a reason to allow jurisdiction [208].”

Lord Briggs was very clear on this point: 

“[The question whether the] level of intervention in the management of the Mine [was] requisite to give rise to a duty of care upon Vedanta to persons living, farming and working in the vicinity… is a pure question of fact. I make no apology for having suggested during argument that it is blindingly obvious that the proof of that particular pudding would depend heavily upon the contents of documents internal to each of the defendant companies, and upon correspondence and other documents passing between them, currently unavailable to the claimants, but in due course disclosable [44].”

This confirms Lord Justice Simon’s (interestingly different from his stance in Okpabi) finding when considering this case in the Court of Appeal. He held that at the early stage of a case the unavailability of sufficient evidence ought not be a barrier, rather “much will depend on whether (…) the pleading represents the actuality [83].”

Defendants in these cases have been pushing for the evidentiary bar to be raised, while judges have bemoaned the rising piles of evidence for only preliminary hearings. This decision should lower both the bar and the piles. Section 3 (below) will address the alternative publicly available evidence the courts may now look to.

2. Rejection of a Chandler ‘straitjacket’

Lord Briggs did not take the view that this parent company liability is a novel category of common law negligence liability requiring specific criteria, rather “there is nothing special or conclusive about the bare parent/subsidiary relationship, it is apparent that the general principles which determine whether A owes a duty of care to C in respect of the harmful activities of B are not novel at all [54].” He positively cited Home Office v Dorset Yacht Co Ltd [1970] UKHL 2 as a circumstance in which it had previously been appropriate to find this duty of care. This is a reversal of previous English judgements that have pushed toward more stringent (and difficult to prove without private documentation) criteria for determining a duty of care in these types of cases. 

This case, and Okpabi, AAA v Unilever, and Thompson v The Renwick Group Plc [2014] EWCA Civ 635, all draw from the judgement of Lady Justice Arden in Chandler v Cape Plc [2012] EWCA Civ 525. In this case Arden concluded that there were “appropriate circumstances [80]” in which liability may be imposed on a parent company for a subsidiary's employees’ health and safety. Four of these that were relevant for this case included:

“(1) the businesses of the parent and subsidiary are in a relevant respect the same; (2) the parent has, or ought to have, superior knowledge on some relevant aspect of health and safety in the particular industry; (3) the subsidiary's system of work is unsafe as the parent company knew, or ought to have known; and (4) the parent knew or ought to have foreseen that the subsidiary or its employees would rely on its using that superior knowledge for the employees’ protection. For the purposes of (4) it is not necessary to show that the parent is in the practice of intervening in the health and safety policies of the subsidiary. The court will look at the relationship between the companies more widely. [80]”

She makes it clear however, that this is not a restrictive list. She positively quoted Lord Oliver in Caparo Industries Plc v. Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605:

"'Proximity' is, no doubt a convenient expression so long as it is realised that it is no more than a label which embraces not a definable concept but merely a description of circumstances in which, pragmatically, the courts conclude that a duty of care exists [page 633]."

What had happened however, is that these criteria have hardened throughout Thompson, AAA v Unilever and Okpabi as courts determine how to find evidence of parent company control. Briggs found that one of the few mistakes of the trial judge was “imposing a straitjacket derived from the Chandler case. [60]” Rather, since there is “no limit to the models of management and control which may be put in place within a multinational group of companies… I would be reluctant to seek to shoehorn all cases of the parent’s liability into specific categories of that kind, helpful though they will no doubt often be for the purposes of analysis. [51]” 

As acknowledged by Briggs, analysis and consistency will probably lead to the Chandler criteria (and subsequent iterations) continue to be used as a stepping-off point, however future first-instance judges should no longer view themselves bound to accept these as the only means of determining the likelihood of a duty of care arising. 

3. The size of a company’s operations does not dilute a duty of care

Briggs‘s judgement reflects Sale’s dissent in Okpabi, in which he disagreed that the scale of a company’s operations should necessarily be a factor precluding the finding of control or proximity. Looking by analogy at the Chandler case, Briggs said it was “difficult to see” why making a bad practice part of group-wide policy would diminish the responsibility of a parent “if the unsafe system of work, namely the manufacture of asbestos in open-sided factories, had formed part of a group-wide policy and had been applied by asbestos manufacturing subsidiaries around the world. [52]”

In Okpabi, while dismissing the claimant’s appeal, Lord Justice Simon endorsed the warning of Justice Cardozo in Ultramares Corpn v Touche (1932) 174 NE 441 against the danger of exposing defendants to “a liability in an indeterminate amount for an indeterminate time to an indeterminate class (p. 44).” According to the first instance judge in the Okpabi case, applying Cardozo’s reasoning meant that the sheer size of Royal Dutch Shell mitigated against finding liability: “In my judgment, that is the antithesis to proximity or neighbourhood. There are 1,366 other companies in the Shell Group, and the service and operating companies amongst that number perform activities in 101 different countries [114].” However, Lord Justice Sales dissented on this point: 

“I do not think that the simple matter of the sheer size of the Shell group can be an answer to the present claim: why should the parent of a large group escape liability just because of the size of the group, if the criteria for imposing a duty of care are satisfied for a number of companies in the group, while the parent of a smaller group (e.g. with one subsidiary) has a duty of care imposed on it when precisely the same criteria are satisfied in relation to its subsidiary? [172]”

This point links with the next concerning how much stock should be placed in publicly accessible group-wide policies and guidelines. 

4. Public-facing group-wide policies and guidelines alleging group control are potentially sufficient as a basis to argue a case of parent company control 

At paragraph [61], Briggs pointed to Vedanta’s published documents concerning their standards of environmental control over the actions of subsidiaries, and how they implemented these standards, as sufficient evidence that a duty of care may be demonstrable at trial.  There has been dissent in past cases regarding the evidentiary importance of public-facing group-wide policies and guidelines, including policies making CSR-style promises of environmental and human rights compliance. 

Lord Briggs firmly rejected the suggestion that there was a general principle that group-wide policies and guidelines would never cause a parent to incur a duty of care in respect of the activities of a particular subsidiary [52]. He gave the example of group guidelines that may contain systemic errors, which in turn cause subsidiaries to cause environmental damage when implemented.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this judgment is the potential Briggs explicitly pointed out of parent companies being held to their public commitments of social and environmental responsibility: 

 “Similarly, it seems to me that the parent may incur the relevant responsibility to third parties if, in published materials, it holds itself out as exercising that degree of supervision and control of its subsidiaries, even if it does not in fact do so. In such circumstances its very omission may constitute the abdication of a responsibility which it has publicly undertaken. [53].”

This is a strong turn away from Lord Justice Simon’s finding in Okpabi, which relegated evidence from this style of public-facing document as only “published for the purpose of informing shareholders and regulators about the Shell Group businesses. Such statements must be read in their proper context [120]… All this is as one might expect of best practices which are shared across a business operating internationally [121],” and so dismissing their evidential value as to finding a duty of care. 

Briggs now has re-defined that ‘proper context’. The implications of this passage for future litigation is potentially massive. Parent companies in many jurisdictions have made soft, PR-friendly commitments to environmental and social standards. On the face of this passage, communities impacted by the subsidiary of a UN Global Compact signatory could potentially sue them for failing to honour the public commitments made to undertake effective due diligence. 

B. Access to justice as the jurisdictional hook

The Court made it clear that the issue of access to justice for the claimants was not due to any deficiencies with the Zambian courts, which the Court considered completely capable of ensuring a just trial and handling a large group claim. Rather, the Court still found that access to justice in Zambia was jeopardised for a group tort claim for two reasons: the claimants had no prospect of funding the claims in Zambia because Zambian law does not permit conditional fee agreements, and (according to the evidence available to the first instance judge) no law firms in that jurisdiction have the requisite resources or experience to properly represent the group claim. 

The Supreme Court differed from the lower courts concerning the importance of Article 4.1 of the Recast Brussels Regulation (which confers a right on any claimant to sue an English domiciled defendant in English courts) when it comes to settling the jurisdictional question.[1] In these cases, to avoid the risk of conflicting judgements England will usually be a proper place to bring a claim for both the parent and the non-domiciled subsidiary. 

The lower courts, including the first instance judge, considered this mandatory provision a ‘trump card’ to which all other considerations regarding forum should cede, however the Supreme Court found this was not the case, rather it is one consideration among others to be considered [82].  Claimants have a choice when contemplating which jurisdiction they ought to bring a claim: whether to run the risk of irreconcilable judgements by having parallel proceedings in England and Zambia, or avoiding that risk by suing both defendants in the same proceedings and jurisdiction [83]. 

In this case, Vedanta agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of the Zambian courts, and all the other connecting factors (the location of the harm, nationality of claimants, location of documents and other evidence, competency of the courts and their knowledge of the applicable Zambian law) point to Zambia being “overwhelmingly the proper place for a claim to be tried” [85]. If this were the whole story then Article 4 would not be a trump card to anchor the case in England, and the weight would fall to Zambia being the most appropriate forum. If this were the whole story, the Court would have granted the appeal and declined jurisdiction to the claimants. However, because of the fore-mentioned overriding issues of access to justice, in this case England was determined to be the appropriate forum. This stance is consistent with previous positions of the court and English common law: the same exception to the forum non conveniens principle was demonstrated in The Vishva Ajay [1989] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 558 (QB) [560] in which the court denied to stay proceedings in England because of the possibility of substantial injustice in the natural forum (India). 

This is significant, because it shows the cognisance of the Court to the importance of material access to justice. This is a fundamental hurdle to claims by communities without the resources necessary to launch expensive, prolonged suits. Without appropriate fee-arrangements, these claims would not be brought, and accountability for harms perpetrated against the poorest communities would continue to be denied.

Conclusion

Today the UK’s highest court drew a bright red line between (ostensibly) soft CSR commitments and a company’s duty of care to abide by those commitments.  Whether courts take full advantage of the opportunity provided by the Supreme Court in this case remains to be seen, however on a number of fronts, there is now more reason for optimism for those seeking to hold parent companies accountable for extraterritorial harms. 

The previous restrictive approach taken by the courts regarding finding a ‘triable’ case during initial jurisdiction proceedings appears to have been broadened. The Court has however made it clear that the EU regulations regarding jurisdiction are not the catch-all previously envisioned, but rather the courts must weigh all the relevant issues before determining jurisdiction. This is not necessarily a bad thing for potential claimants: group tort claims are being brought to the UK not because of its sunny weather, but often rather because of the availability of fee arrangements that would allow for high-magnitude group claims (such as conditional fee agreements, as discussed in Lungowe and Ors. v Vedanta Resources Plc and Konkola Copper Mines Plc [2017] EWCA Civ 1528 at [125], [179]) against defendants capable of meeting the financial penalty. The Court has made it clear that even if the natural forum is capable of handling a claim in every other way, claimants may seek the service of English courts for the appropriate fee arrangements alone. 

Next is the real test, as for the first time a UK company will face trial and potentially accountability in the UK for the environmental harms associated with operations of its foreign subsidiary.  

[1] Article 4.1: “Subject to this Regulation, persons domiciled in a Member State shall, whatever their nationality, be sued in the courts of that Member State”

Editor’s note: Maisie Biggs graduated with a MSc in Global Crime, Justice and Security from the University of Edinburgh and holds a LLB from University College London. She is currently working with the Asser Institute in The Hague.  She has worked for International Justice Mission in South Asia and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) in Amsterdam.

The Rome Statute is a central pillar of international criminal law (ICL), and so any discussion concerning the subjection of legal persons requires a revisit of the negotiations surrounding its drafting. However in the time since its implementation, there appears to have been a shift in ICL regarding corporate liability. Developing customary international law, treaty law and now most domestic legal systems have some established mechanisms for prosecuting legal persons for violations of ICL.

The Rome Statute

A lot has been written on the negotiations surrounding the drafting of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). This document established the International Criminal Court (ICC), its rules and jurisdiction, and codified the core crimes of ICL and surrounding general principles. Article 25(1) of the Rome Statute explicitly restricts the court’s jurisdiction to natural persons, meaning that corporate wrongdoing may only be approached by the ICC through individual criminal responsibility or superior responsibility for corporate actors.^[1] The Statute was a “major achievement”^[2] as the first international law instrument essentially summarising the general principles of criminal law across national legal systems.^[3] Concerns about ‘complementarity’ arose as the ICC would be expanding the reach of ICL far beyond the remit of ad hoc Tribunals like those used to try crimes in Rwanda and Former Yugoslavia. The new Court needed to complement, rather than undermine national courts and jurisdiction.^[4]

During negotiations, individual responsibility of legal persons, corporations or criminal organisations was described as “a major political issue on which political guidance from the Committee was needed.”^[5] France had submitted a compromise proposal in the International Criminal Court Draft Statute of 1998 concerning the inclusion of responsibility of legal persons. The French representatives surmised that resistance from other states to its inclusion was because there was no equivalent in some domestic legal systems, while others held the view that the concept would be misapplied in an international criminal court.^[6]

The French proposal linked the responsibility of the legal persons with the responsibility of criminal organisations at Nuremberg. Under this proposal, group responsibility would be linked with the previous commission of a crime by a natural person (thus in no way concealing individual responsibility), and adopting in parts Article 10 of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal,^[7] the Court would make binding determinations on the criminality of an organisation, which states would need to implement and then penalise by fines or proceeds of crime confiscation.^[8]

The proposed text was as follows:

“[Art 23(5)]: Without prejudice to any individual criminal responsibility of natural persons under this Statute, the Court may also have jurisdiction over a juridical person under this Statute. Charges may be filed by the Prosecutor against a juridical person, and the Court may render a judgement over a judicial person for the crime charged, if:

(a) The charges filed by the Prosecutor against the natural person and the juridical person allege the matters referred to in subparagraphs (b) and (c); and

(b) The natural person charged was in a position of control within the juridical person under the national law of the State where the juridical person was registered at the time the crime was committed; and 

(c) The crime was committed by the natural person acting on behalf of and with the explicit consent of that juridical person and in the course of its activities; and

(d) The natural person has been convicted of the crime charged.

For the purpose of this Statute, ‘juridical person’ means a corporation whose concrete, real or dominant objective is seeking private profit or benefit, and not a State or other public body in the exercise of State authority, a public international body or an organisation registered, and acting under the national law of a State as a non-profit organisation.”^[9]

This was a compromise solution from France between liberal and romantic conceptions,^[10] looking not only to convict ultimately the company or organisation, but rather still use it as a mechanism for attributing responsibility to individuals.^[11] Several countries supported the concept, however prevailing concerns of enforcement and complementarity remained, especially for countries with no basis of corporate criminal liability. The matter was referred to the Working Group following mixed reception from states, however once there, negotiations met stifling time pressures.^[12] Per Saland, the Chairman of the working group which negotiated issues surrounding Part 3 of the Rome Statute concerning these general principles of criminal law (including Article 25 on individual responsibility), has since revealed that time ran out for the Working Group when it came to discussion of some more difficult issues, including liability of legal persons.^[13] David Scheffer, who was also involved in the negotiations, has confirmed that the combination of time pressures and complementarity concerns prevented the proposal from succeeding, however he has added that another contributing factor was a more fundamental concern that the “novelty” of the proposed corporate criminal liability would have “imperilled” the entire treaty’s ratification by states.^[14]

No agreement was reached concerning subjecting legal persons. Article 25(3)(d) retained a reference to a ‘group of persons acting’,^[15] so the French idea of individual participation in a larger collective was incorporated to an extent, however all references to legal persons have been removed in the final article. Perhaps unintentionally, a similar door for corporate liability remained ajar in article 7(2)(a), through reference to organisational policy.^[16] In the ICC investigation into the Kenyan situation,^[17] the Court examined this issue:

“Clearly, the 'organization' is an entity different from a "State" if the legislator was to avoid redundancy. Thus, it is permissive to conclude that an 'organization' may be a private entity (a nonstate actor) which is not an organ of a State or acting on behalf of a State [para 45].”

The Court delineated various ‘state-like’ characteristics that a non-state actor would have to demonstrate in order to qualify as an organisation under this article,^[18] however none expressly excluded legal persons like companies from the article’s ambit. 

Andrew Clapham provides an in-depth history of the Rome Statute negotiations, and how controversial this question of legal persons became.^[19] This episode has been treated as a definitive rejection of ICL liability for legal persons,^[20] however the Rome Statute is just one (important) part of the larger ICL picture.

Post-Rome caselaw developments 

Since Rome, customary international law through Tribunals, treaty law, and domestic law have all developed. Most notably, for the first time legal persons have been subjected under ICL by an international criminal tribunal.^[21] In the Al Jadeed S.A.L. & Ms Khayat (New TV S.A.L.)^[22] case, an Appeals Panel for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) overturned a decision that the Tribunal lacked jurisdiction over legal persons on 2 October 2014, allowing the case to proceed against the corporate entity Al Jadeed S.A.L. and natural person Ms Khayat. This was then followed by another contempt case Akhbar Beirut S.A.L., similarly against a legal and natural person.^[23] In New TV S.A.L., Judge Baragwanath acknowledged the development of domestic corporate accountability, and so determined that international criminal law has likewise progressed:

“Corporate liability for serious harms is a feature of most of the world’s legal systems and therefore qualifies as a general principle of law. Where States still differ is whether such liability should be civil or criminal or both. However, the Appeals Panel considers that… corporate criminal liability is on the verge of attaining, at the very least, the status of a general principle of law applicable under international law.”^[24]

The decision has been met with a mixed reception. Filled with “historical references and normative ambition,”^[25] some commentators have characterised the decision as an encouraging progression from state practice and foundation stone for future ICL criminal liability.^[26] However the basis of Judge Baragwanath’s decision has been described by Dov Jacobs as a “molotov cocktail to kill the principle of legality” as the judge’s reasoning relied only on “the ‘spirit’ of the statute combined with inherent jurisdiction.” Others have found the later Akhbar Beirut S.A.L. opinion more convincing due to its more concrete basis in Lebanese law.

The Tribunal very consciously restricted their consideration and findings to the specific crime of contempt: looking to precedent, they examined only whether there had been previous findings on contempt with regards to legal persons in the various international criminal tribunals, and found there had “simply been no legal pronouncement on this specific issue.” ^[27] The Tribunal drew its power to prosecute for contempt from its inherent jurisdiction as a judicial institution.^[28] Like the ICTY and ICTR before it, the STL’s primary jurisdiction for ‘core’ international crimes is explicitly over only natural persons, however the separate framework in the general Rules of Procedure and Evidence allowed the Tribunal to consider the broader definition of ‘persons’ for contempt.  The importance of this distinction for the case does also support Andrew Clapham’s argument that “at this point, the exclusion of non-natural persons can be seen as the consequence of a ‘rule of procedure’ rather than the inevitable result of application of international criminal law.”^[29]

There is debate about the broader applicability of these decisions, because of the STL's ties to Lebanese law. The STL itself is a partially-domestic forum which reduces the ICL significance of an ‘international tribunal’ taking this step. The legal basis for the Tribunal’s decisions is at least partially grounded in Lebanese law -  Article 2 of the formative statute of the STL mandates the use of Lebanese law (under which corporate criminal liability is possible) - however it is debatable whether this case is purely an instance of domestic legal application of international criminal law. Article 2 concerns only the applicable criminal law, (i.e., the ‘core crimes’ discussed above) and not the procedural rules on which this decision was based, which are grounded in international law concerning international tribunals. It would then appear that the legal basis for this decision was purely international, and the Tribunal in New TV S.A.L. accordingly based their decision on  “current international standards,”^[30] however in the Akhbar Beirut S.A.L. case the Tribunal links back the foreseeability of this corporate prosecution to Lebanese law: “It would be an oddity for a Lebanese company to face criminal sanction in Lebanon for interfering with the administration of justice with respect to cases before Lebanese courts and at the same time enjoy impunity for similar acts before an internationalised Tribunal guided by Lebanese law in carrying out its judicial work.“^[31]

The highest profile media case last before an international tribunal also concerned the responsibility of legal persons. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) had a special focus on the media’s role of incitement in the Rwandan genocide.^[32] As the Tribunal in the Akayesu case positively quoted: “it was impossible that hundreds of thousands of people should commit so many crimes unless they had been incited to do so.”^[33] The ICTR case of Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al.^[34] (also known as the Media Case) tried three natural persons for their roles in inciting the Rwandan genocide. Two of these were the controlling figures of media organisations: RTLM was a radio station and Kangura a publication. The court found a specific “specific causal connection” between RTLM broadcasts and the killings, which “engaged in ethnic stereotyping …[which] called explicitly for the extermination of the Tutsi ethnic group.”^[35] The articles published by Kangura similarly had the impact of “whipping the Hutu population into a killing frenzy.”^[36] What was distinctive about this case was that the court, before outlining the individual responsibility of the named accused, went into great detail about the culpability of the organisations in question. The court named the media organisations themselves as responsible for inciting genocide: “If the downing of the [President’s] plane was the trigger, then RTLM, Kangura and CDR were the bullets in the gun.”^[37] It was not possible under the ICTR’s jurisdictional mandate to subject legal persons and so the court in the Media case did not broach this issue, however the structure and substance of the court’s reasoning centred primarily on the responsibility of the organisations, and only after did the court then address the roles of the natural persons who were actually on trial.

What may merit further investigation is how media cases before international tribunals differ from the prosecution of other international crimes that corporate actors engage in, such as pillage or complicity. The media acts as the ‘fourth estate’, a fundamental and (ideally) independent pillar of a functioning system of democratic governance. Arguably then, media companies are not purely private, non-state actors but serve a partially civic function, and so are in some ways fundamentally different actors than other corporate entities.^[38] How the unique role of this specific ‘private’ actor impacts its liability under ICL warrants further investigation.

International instruments imposing some form of corporate liability

A growing number of recent international treaties and conventions are incorporating obligations to impose sanctions on legal persons.^[39] These include the Optional Protocol on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 3(4)), Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime 2000 (Article 10(2)), and Convention Against Corruption 2003 (Article 26 (2)). As pointed out by Sabine Gless and Sarah Wood, these instruments remain vague about implementation.^[40] Nonetheless, for these crimes states are required in some form to impose sanctions on legal persons.^[41]

The Draft Articles on Crimes Against Humanity being prepared by the International Law Commission (ILC) may go the same way as the afore-mentioned draft of the Rome Statute, but for now Draft article 6, paragraph 8 contains explicit subjection of legal persons:

“Subject to the provisions of its national law, each State shall take measures, where appropriate, to establish the liability of legal persons for the offences referred to in this draft article. Subject to the legal principles of the State, such liability of legal persons may be criminal, civil or administrative.”

This final sentence allows for flexibility in domestic application, however the offences being contemplated are international crimes. This convention is being designed to be a development from the Rome Statute, the “next generation” of legal tools concerning crimes against humanity.^[42] The addendum to the ‘Fourth report on crimes against humanity’ drafted by Sean D. Murphy, Special Rapporteur of the ILC, links this article with the previously mentioned international law instruments which are subjecting legal persons.

Conclusion

The ICC is as yet not touched by these developments, however there are glimmerings of a shift in customary ICL. As will be explored in the next post in this series, most domestic legal systems now have established mechanisms for prosecuting legal persons for violations of ICL. The Rome Statute negotiations surrounding the subjection of legal persons were centralised on complementarity; if domestic law has fundamentally shifted in the interim period it makes sense that this issue be revisited in international caselaw and international instruments as well.

^[1] David Scheffer, ‘Corporate Liability under the Rome Statute’ (2016) 57 Harvard International Law Journal Online Symposium 35, 35.

^[2] Per Saland, ‘International Criminal Law Principles’ in Roy S Lee (ed) The International Criminal Court: The Making of the Rome Statute (Kluwer Law International NL, 1999) 190-191.

^[3] ibid.

^[4] Andrew Clapham, ‘The Question of Jurisdiction under International Criminal Law over Legal Persons: Lessons from the Rome Conference on an International Criminal Court’, in Menno Kamminga and S Zia-Zarifi (eds), Liability of Multinational Corporations Under International Law (Kluwer Law International, 2000) 139, 142.

^[5] ‘Summary records of the plenary meetings and of the meetings of the Committee of the Whole’ in Official Records of the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Rome, 15 June-17 July 1998, Vol. II, UN Doc. A/Conf.183/C.1./L.3, 132.

^[6] ibid 133.

^[7] Clapham (n 4) 147.

^[8] ‘Summary records of the plenary meetings and of the meetings of the Committee of the Whole’ (n 5) 133.

^[9] ‘Working paper on article 23, paragraphs 5 and 6, UN Doc. A/Conf.183/C.1/WGGP/L.5/Rev.2, 3 July 1998’ in Official Records of the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Rome, 15 June-17 July 1998, Vol. III, 252.

^[10] “A liberal conception of responsibility focuses on individual agency and abstracts individual wrong from collective action. The ‘romantic’ view admits that international crimes are typically by their very nature committed in collectivities, and thus closely connected to some degree of collective will. The two traditions have been in conflict since the naissance of international criminal law.” in Carsten Stahn, ‘Liberals vs. Romantics: Challenges of An Emerging Corporate International Criminal Law’ (2018) 50 Case W Res J Intl L 91, 99.

^[11] ibid, 100.

^[12] Saland (n 2) 194.

^[13] ibid.

^[14] Scheffer (n 1) 38.

^[15] See the Case Matrix Network commentary on Article 25(3)(d) for the relationship between this and the doctrine of Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE).

^[16] “‘Attack directed against any civilian population’ means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack” [emphasis added].

^[17] Decision Pursuant to Article 15 of the Rome Statute on the Authorization of an Investigation into the Situation in the Republic of Kenya: ICC-01/09-19-Corr 01-04-2010 110/163

^[18] “[para 68] As I have endeavoured to demonstrate above, certain criteria need to be satisfied to qualify a non-state actor as an 'organization' under the ambit of article 7(2)(a) of the Statute. This state-like 'organization' is the author of a policy "to commit such attack" against any civilian population which is implemented by its members using the means of the 'organization'. As in case of a State policy, it seems to me that the "organizational policy" must be established at the policymaking level of the ‘organization'."

^[19] Clapham (n 4) 142.

^[20] This negotiation process was used as a basis for the UK and Netherlands Amici Curiae brief in the Kiobel case, which argued that there was no corporate liability under international criminal law: “corporations have been deliberately excluded from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.” Brief of the Governments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Kingdom of the Netherlands as Amici Curiae in support of the Respondents (No. 10-1491) (filed 3 February 2012), 17.

In the Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC decision, the negotiation process was cited by both Justice Kennedy in the lead decision [p 15] and Justice Sotomayor in her dissent [p 8], the former using it as evidence of ICL's rejection of corporate liability, and the latter characterising it as evidence merely of varying domestic practices and not a definitive rejection of corporate civil liability under the Alien Tort Statute (as was one of the issues in this case).

^[21] Nadia Bernaz, ‘Corporate Criminal Liability under International Law: The New TVS.A.L. and Akhbar Beirut S.A.L. Cases at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’ (2015) 13 Journal of International Criminal Justice, 313, 313.

^[22] New TV S.A.L, Decision on Interlocutory Appeal Concerning Personal Jurisdiction in Contempt Proceedings, Al Jadeed S.A.L. & Ms Khayat (STL-14-05),, Special Tribunal for Lebanon Appeals Panel (2 October 2014).

^[23] Akhbar Beirut S.A.L., Decision on Interlocutory Appeal Concerning Personal Jurisdiction in Contempt Proceedings, Case No STL-14-06/PT/AP/AR126.1, 23 January 2015.

^[24] New TV S.A.L. (n 22) para 67.

^[25] Stahn (n 10) 98.

^[26] See Nadia Bernaz (n 21).

^[27] New TV S.A.L. (n 22) para 41.

^[28] As articulated in Rule 60 bis (A) [Contempt and Obstruction of Justice] of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence for the STL.

^[29] Andrew Clapham, ‘Extending International Criminal Law beyond the Individual to Corporations and Armed Opposition Groups’ (2008) 6 Journal of International Criminal Justice 899, 902.

^[30] New TV S.A.L. (n 22) para 60.

^[31] Akhbar Beirut S.A.L. (n 23) para 59.

^[32] “The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility. Those who control such media are accountable for its consequences.” Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al., ICTR–99–52, Judgment and Sentence (3 December 2003) para 945.

^[33] Akayesu (TC) ICTR-96-4 (2 September 1998) para 551.

^[34]Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al., ICTR–99–52, Judgment and Sentence (3 December 2003) para 953.

^[35] Ibid para 949.

^[36] Ibid para 951.

^[37] Ibid para 953.

^[38] This might be a controversial statement within the broader debate in Business Human Rights circles concerning the civil functions, and public duties and responsibilities, of all companies.

^[39] Bert Swart cites seventeen international instruments which have provisions on corporate criminal liability with discretion concerning state-level sanctions, “while before 1997 none existed at all": Bert Swart, ‘International Trends Towards Establishing Some Form of Punishment for Corporations’ (2008) 6 J International Grim Just 947, 949.

^[40] Sabine Gless and Sarah Wood, ‘General Report on Prosecuting Corporations for Violations of International Criminal Law: Jurisdictional Issues’ in S Gless and S Broniszewska (eds) Prosecuting Corporations for Violations of International Criminal Law: Jurisdictional Issues (International Colloquium Section 4, Basel, 21-23 June 2017) 16.

^[41] ibid.

^[42] See a summary of Professor Murphy’s 2015 Supranational Criminal Law Lecture at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut.