6 Multinational Corporations

The MNC — the global economy's giant — remains formally an object: a creature of (some) municipal law, without general treaty capacity, claim-right or responsibility under international law. Yet the practice's drift toward limited, functional capacity:1. Standing in investment arbitration: the investor as claimant under investment treaties (ICSID and UNCITRAL practice — the corporation suing a sovereign);2. Soft-law obligations: the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011 — the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; the due-diligence architecture), the OECD Guidelines' national contact points, the ILO tripartite framework — norms addressed to corporations directly, without hard obligation;3. Criminal dimensions: corporate complicity in international crimes (the Nuremberg-era industrialist precedents; the modern doctrine debates — international criminal law's corporate- liability gap, Unit 6 of Criminal Law-I);4. Treaty practice: the WHO Framework Convention's era, and the prospective Binding Treaty on business and human rights negotiations — the possibility of a conventional personality grant.The exam's balanced line: the MNC is a subject-in-formation — powerful enough to be norm- addressee, not yet responsible enough to be a subject; international law's hardest ongoing personality question.