Call for Papers for the Biennial Law and Ethics Symposium—The Boundaries of Corporations’ Responsibility, UCL Centre for Ethics and Law

The Symposium’s theme, ‘Boundaries of Corporations’ Responsibility’, relates to the debates regarding corporations’ roles in detecting and preventing mischief/harm caused by third parties to which they are related, for example, in the supply chain, or within a corporate group, business network or alliance. These mischiefs or harms relate to labour/human rights abuses in supply chains, harms to community/environment in relation to climate change, conflict minerals, misinformation leading to harms, such as online harms, etc. These risks, which the Symposium terms as ‘boundary risks’, often take place beyond the firm’s structural or control boundaries, but for which the firm may be regarded as having some extent of responsibility.

Pertinent legal frameworks relating to corporations’ ‘boundary risks’ include mandatory corporate due diligence duties, criminal legislation and public enforcement, civil enforcement and corporate liability, including enterprise liability, and the soft law/best practices relating to corporations’ own risk and reputational management. The theoretical debates regarding corporations’ ‘boundary risks’ have often focused on how a corporation is conceived, its purpose/s and private or public orientations. These debates are challenging to reconcile and have deep roots in political and economic ideology. Despite ideological contests, policymakers may make pragmatic choices in relation to corporate law and corporate governance reforms, in order to redesignate corporations’ governance capacity over third parties. The Symposium wishes to focus on the potential ‘shapes and shifts’ for corporate law as doctrine and practice, the implications for corporate advisory work, general counsel, and corporate compliance practice.

We have particular interest in papers focusing on the following:

• how expanding boundary risks for corporations affects doctrinal development in company/corporate law;
• comparative legal research on both developed and developing jurisdictions’ approaches to corporations’ ‘boundary risks’, including hard and soft law;
• empirical research on the practice and implementation of ‘boundary risk management’ such as in terms of supply chain due diligence, internal systems, risk management and controls;
• the implications of criminal law reform such as prevention-based duties for a wide range of harms or conduct;
• private litigation or public enforcement against corporations in relation to boundary risks, including questions of enterprise liability.

This is a one-day Symposium, to be held at Bentham House, UCL Faculty of Laws, in early-mid October 2023.

The UCL Centre for Ethics and Law will fully fund the travel expenses (return economy travel class) and accommodation of selected Symposium speakers for two nights in central London close to Bentham House. Where papers are jointly authored, we are only able to fund one of the authors as representative speaker.

The Centre invites abstracts of up to 500 words to be submitted for consideration to be selected and invited to the Symposium. Paper abstracts are to be submitted to hse-yu.chiu@ucl.ac.uk for consideration by 31 April 2023. We aim to inform successful paper presenters by 30 May 2023. Papers for the Symposium are to be complete and ready by 15 September 2023.

The Centre reserves the right to make final selections for the Symposium. Selection for the Symposium will be based on the need for diverse participation, amongst UK and overseas academic scholars, junior and senior academic scholars, the representation of diverse methodologies and perspectives as well as gender diversity. All papers must be in English, original (not translated from existing works in foreign languages) and unpublished/unsubmitted elsewhere, having a maximum length of 11,000 words including footnotes, and prepared according to the OSCOLA citation format. We envisage that Symposium papers will be finalised for a special volume to be published by the European Business Law Review in 2024.

For any queries please feel free to contact Iris H-Y Chiu, Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, UCL Faculty of Laws at hse-yu.chiu@ucl.ac.uk.