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"How can businesses and their shareholders avoid moral and legal complicity in human rights violations? This central and contemporary issue in the field of ethics, politics and law is of concern to intergovernmental organizations such as the UN and to many NGOs, as well as investors and employees. In this volume legal scholars and political philosophers identify and address the intertwined issues of moral and legal complicity in human rights violations by companies and those who invest in them. By describing the legal aspects of human rights violations in the corporate sphere, addressing the complicity of companies with regard to such norms and exploring the influence of investors, the book provides a thorough introduction to corporate social responsibility. Human Rights, Corporate Complicity and Disinvestment will set the research agenda on socially responsible investment for years to come"--

"How can businesses and their shareholders avoid moral and legal complicity in human rights violations? This central and contemporary issue in the field of ethics, politics and law is of concern to intergovernmental organizations such as the UN and to many NGOs, as well as investors and employees. In this volume legal scholars and political philosophers identify and address the intertwined issues of moral and legal complicity in human rights violations by companies and those who invest in them. By describing the legal aspects of human rights violations in the corporate sphere, addressing the complicity of companies with regard to such norms and exploring the influence of investors, the book provides a thorough introduction to corporate social responsibility. Human Rights, Corporate Complicity and Disinvestment will set the research agenda on socially responsible investment for years to come"--

This thesis seeks to examine the interplay between business and human rights within the context of political transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule. In the wake of the globalisation process and the subsequent breakdown of the Westphalian state system, transnational corporations (TNCs) have acquired augmented powers at a global level where previously states had been the only players; and yet TNCs have none of the human rights obligations of states, particularly under international law. This dissertation aims to examine why this accountability lacuna exists in relation to corporations, specifically in relation to state-sponsored human rights violations in which TNCs are complicit.

Abstract
Transnational trade is at the heart of the global economy. Trade relations often transcend both ideological divides and regime type. Trading with autocratic regimes, however, raises significant moral issues. In their recent book, On Trade Justice, Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner argue that trade with autocratic regimes is morally permissible only under a very limited set of circumstances. This article discusses the morally permissible trade policies that liberal democracies ought to adopt toward autocratic regimes. Liberal democracies trading with autocratic regimes have a special obligation to improve the human rights conditions in these regimes. This duty is partly based on their complicity in human rights violations and on the fact that the democracies benefit from these violations in their trading relationships. Their responsibility goes beyond the improvement of labor conditions and requires various strategies such as imposing trade sanctions and export controls, and making trade conditional on human rights performance.

Democracy or Corporations" were the words that appeared on posters and in graffiti on the March 26, 2014 commemoration of the 1976 coup in Argentina. Those words capture the efforts that the country has begun in holding businesses accountable for their role in the military regime's repressive apparatus. It might not be surprising that Argentina, as the world leader in transitional justice innovations, might add corporate accountability to its set of accomplishments. The puzzle underlying this chapter, however, is whether other countries will follow Argentina's lead or if the factors shaping the corporate accountability processes in Argentina are unique and nontransferable to other contexts. We thus explore Argentina's efforts in a comparative framework and also attempt to build a theoretical link connecting accountability for business complicity with the broader transitional justice field. To fulfill these objectives we raise and address the following questions: Why and when should corporate accountability become a new focus within transitional justice? Where and how are these transitional justice innovations occurring? We conclude with some reflections on the question of what factors contribute to success in achieving transitional justice goals through accountability for corporate complicity. Our responses to these questions draw on our cross-national research on accountability for corporate complicity, with a particular focus on Argentina in a comparative context. Transitional Justice and Corporate Complicity: Why and When Traditionally, transitional justice (hereafter TJ) has focused on the behavior of states and their direct associates in perpetrating human rights violations. The definition of TJ and its practice, however, have not excluded non-state actors as targets for accountability. TJ could thus be extended to include corporate accountability for complicity in past dictatorships and civil conflict, as we argue in this chapter. TJ has been defined as a response to "systematic or widespread violations of ...