This chapter seeks to consider the philosophical question whether corporations have obligations for the realization of fundamental rights, and if so, what the nature of those obligations is. It begins with a brief history, aimed at identifying some of the key ideas underlying fundamental rights discourse. These rights, it is argued, flow from certain fundamental features of individuals. As such, they emerge from what is termed the perspective of recipience, namely, of the individual who is being protected. This perspective is often criticized for failing to specify the agents who are to realize these rights. Nevertheless, it is pointed out that what is most important from this perspective is that the rights of the recipient are realized. This entails that no agent may legitimately harm or threaten individuals who possess such rights. Such an entailment applies equally to corporations as well as other business entities. While negative obligations to avoid harming fundamental rights appear to flow logically from the nature of fundamental rights, what remains more controversial is the extent to which corporations bear responsibility for actively taking steps to help realize the fundamental rights of individuals. Some contend that it is the state that must primarily bear such positive obligations.
To answer this question, a brief understanding of the nature and purpose of the corporation is necessary. Some view the corporation as reducible to the individuals lying behind it and its purpose as involving solely the achievement of maximum profit. Contrary to this view, this chapter argues that the corporation must be viewed both from the perspective of individuals investing in it (“the individual perspective”) and the perspective of lawmakers who create this entity (“the societal perspective”). The societal perspective requires that the corporate entity have a benefit for society. As such, the first key duty is that corporations avoid harming rights. That very obligation, however, when analyzed in more depth, does not simply require noninterference but also significant positive obligations. An argument is presented that requires corporations to assume significant positive obligations on the basis of the harms caused by the private property system within which they are intrinsically enmeshed.
The societal perspective from which the corporation emerges also in a more direct way involves recognizing that corporations are formed not simply for attaining individual profit but for achieving social benefits. Lawmakers are under a stringent obligation to ensure most particularly the realization of fundamental rights. Corporations, it is argued, are thus formed partially for the purpose of contributing to the important social purpose of realizing fundamental rights. Given its distinctive nature, however, and the duality intrinsic to it, there is a need also to draw limits to those very obligations. The chapter thus provides a case for recognizing that corporations are social entities and bound to contribute to the advancement of fundamental rights. The individual perspective on the corporation helps us recognize that they will often fulfill these obligations in a distinctive manner. It also helps us to recognize certain principled limits upon these obligations.
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