Immunità delle imprese e sviluppo globale: un male necessario? – Quando lo Stato retrocede dalle politiche di sviluppo: comparare alcune suggestioni giurisprudenziali

Abstract

Corporate immunity and global development: a badly needed? - When the State recedes from development policies: comparing some jurisprudential suggestions – Globalization has seen the relegation of States, leaving firm as a promoter of development. In this way, giant global companies are born. It exists a legal vacuum where firms operate outside the jurisdiction of the domestic State and within the system of weak, or weakened, rules of the host State. This space of immunity becomes a goal to be pursued through complex corporate architectures. In this institutional disorder, the Courts become the place of regulation of corporate responsibility in his supply chain. In the United States, the Alien Tort Statute has been invoked several times against multinational companies until the Nestlé case in 2021. Canadian and British jurisprudence seeks to trace corporate responsibility not only in the sensitivity of international law, but also through the tools of commercial law and tort law. The firm, therefore, outside the democratic process, stands between economic and political competition, representing an alternative pole to the public function. The essay analyzes some comparative case law experiences in order to warn about the retrocession of the state in the face of the negative externalities of the globalized economy.