The intended purpose of civil damages has always been understood as being to make the “injured party whole.” In other words, civil damages are intended to remedy the losses the plaintiff incurred because of the harm perpetrated against them. This purpose has acted as a foundational principle in modern jurisprudence and has influenced the language of remedial provisions in many contemporary pieces of legislation. One such piece of legislation is Title VII...
In 2022, Yvon Chouinard and his family gave their ownership of Patagonia to two entities, the Patagonia Purpose Trust and the Holdfast Collective, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The structurewas designed to ensure that Patagonia, the company Chouinard had built, would continue to operate with attention to sustainability and employee wellbeing. Patagonia will distribute its profits to the Holdfast Collective, which will use the profits “to fight the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities.” The Patagonia Purpose Trust...
Under the ratification doctrine, an understudied concept of enormous practical importance, people can become responsible for actions they never authorized and never intended to approve, just as if the unauthorized actions really had been authorized. This seemingly paradoxical idea is frequently used to turn unauthorized commitments into binding legal contracts even though the obligor never authorized the commitment and never manifested an intent, consent, or willingness to be bound...
Currently, society is demanding that for-profit businesses “awaken” to environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) issues. Stakeholderism has taken root with the idea that businesses must serve a much broader range of constituencies than just shareholders. This creates questions as to what responsibilities corporations owe to society and how corporations ought to be regulated to ensure that these entities act in a socially responsible manner...
While only several decades ago the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) was not trivial, it seems that most scholars today understand that corporations owe special commitments to their stakeholders that go beyond common regulatory and conventional requirements in promoting the community in which they operate. However, while “translating” such a notion to real life and prioritizing these commitments among the corporation’s stakeholders in a corporation that operates domestically is not self-explanatory, translating it in the cross-border context is even more challenging...
My journey in search of the Sustainable Corporation began for me about fifteen years ago. Two journalistic pieces unsettled my worldview. In 2005, I read “The Climate of Man,” a three-part exposé by Elizabeth Kolbert. She described how our modern extractive-technological society was creating a new climate. It was a harrowing account of how humanity was destroying the stable climate of the Holocene and stepping into the chaos of the Anthropocene...