Human Rights, Non-Human Rights, and Multinational Corporation in the Global Age: H Rights Paper 2022 No.3

Abstract

In the age of globalization few elements of the legal atmosphere are viewed with such universal public favor as is the guarantee of Human Rights. The advent of such guarantees is almost uniformly viewed as a mark of human progress, as conferring a positive benefit, as providing necessary relief from want or redress for wrongs of oppression. However, there are multiple ways to view the substance and employment of the Human Right as a source of legal remedy and as instrument of legal oversight. In a general way the idea of Human Rights follows on a long history of rights variously conceived, a history that extends back to the medieval or even the ancient period of the Western tradition. But the instrument employed today is, in fact, a modern innovation of very recent origin. In nascent form it first began to emerge in the interwar period within the British system when it was changing from an imperial to a commonwealth structure of legal oversight. Very soon it was also employed as the legal basis for British entry into the European War of 1939 against Germany. It re-emerged on a worldwide scale after the Allied Victory in World War II, especially at the Nuremberg Trials. it then became integral to a post-war program to construct a stable system of world order--as it was enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Examining the historical context in which Human Rights were first conceived helps in understanding their original composition. Viewing them in relation to the multinational corporation makes it possible to understand their global importance in a twenty-first century Rule of Law.