This article argues that the extension of the international regime of human rights to companies has not changed the essentially state-centric nature of the regime. The analysis focuses on three recent United Nations initiatives: (1) 'Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights', (2) the Global Compact, and (3) the work of the UN special representative on business and human rights. The analysis shows that, despite these initiatives, states are the primary holders (...) of human rights obligations and have a key role in the decision making and enforcement of the regime. Companies have participated to the regime, but they have done so mainly through lobbying governments and thus enforcing the role of states. The analysis also shows that the engagement of new actors to decision-making about the extension of regime norms is essential for norm adoption. Finally, the issue of non-compliant companies needs to be resolved before the regime can be considered established. (shrink)

In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas articulates a system of rights, including human rights, within the democratic constitutional state. For Habermas, while human rights, like other subjective rights have moral content, they do not structurally belong to a moral system; nor should they be grounded in one. Instead, human rights belong to a positive and coercive legal order upon which individuals can make actionable legal claims. Habermas extends this argument to include international human rights, which are realised within the context (...) of a cosmopolitan legal order. The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of law as a mechanism for securing human rights protection. I argue that positive law does make a material difference to securing individual human rights and to cultivating and augmenting a general rights culture both nationally and globally. I suggest that Habermas' model of law presents the most viable way of negotiating the tensions that human rights discourse gives rise to: the tensions between morality and law, between legality and politics, and between the national and international contexts of human rights protection. (shrink)