Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: September 17, 2013

Democratizing International Business and Human Rights by Catalyzing Strategic Litigation

Backer, Larry Catá and Haddad, Nabih and Teraoka, Tomonori and Wang, Keren, Democratizing International Business and Human Rights by Catalyzing Strategic Litigation: The Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the U.N. Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights from the Bottom Up (September 14, 2013). Available at SSRN

With the June 2011 endorsement of the U.N. Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the international community entered a new phase in the approach to the important work of developing global norms for economic activity with human rights impacts, irrespective of the states in which these occur. But the business and human rights project still privileges the state and the elite communities of enterprises, lawyers and civil society organizations that form the networks of norm creation and operationalization on which the objects of human rights discourse are dependent. To effectively implement the Guiding Principles requires an empowerment of all stakeholders down the supply and value chain. This empowerment must naturalize the substantive norms embedded in the Guiding Principles into the cultures of business activity shared by all stakeholders. This article, then, elaborates our initial framework for a three-phase approach for the Democratizing Human Rights/Catalyzing Strategic Litigation (DHR/CSL) initiative, which begins with knowledge production centered on focused toolkits, followed by the education/knowledge transmission phase that involves deployment of knowledge-product as toolkits through student centered training, education, and technical assistance; finally, the project will move towards the operationalization phase where large networks of stakeholders can both effectively and sustainably enforce business due diligence through the implementation of litigation/complaint strategies. The combination of knowledge creation, education/technical assistance and targeted litigation/complaint strategies may serve to overcome the problem of evolving the current development of business and human rights project from a bauble for the use of global elites and as an instrumental project to protect the privilege of states to a mechanics of asserting popular power through the mechanics of markets and the invocation of the international procedures which states themselves are bound to honor.

Declassified FISA Court Opinion Released – Addresses Legality of Phone Metadata Collection

Ellen Nakashima – Washington Post: “A federal surveillance court on Tuesday released a declassified opinion upholding the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s sweeping collection of billions of Americans’ phone records for counterterrorism purposes. The gathering of “all call detail records” from phone companies is justified as long as the government can show that it… Continue Reading

Only One-Quarter of Employers Sustaining Gains From Change Management Initiatives

Focus on manager’s role could spark improvement in companies’ ability to manage change “While employers believe a majority of their change management programs succeed initially, a new survey by global professional services company Towers Watson reveals that only one-quarter of organizations are able to keep the momentum going over the long term. The survey blames… Continue Reading

Bank for International Settlements – 5 Working Papers on Interventions

BIS Working Papers: Order Flow and the Real: Indirect Evidence of the Effectiveness of Sterilized Interventions Interventions and inflation expectations in an inflation targeting economy The impact of pre-announced day-to-day interventions on the Colombian exchange rate On central bank interventions in the Mexican peso/dollar foreign exchange market Asymmetric effects of FOREX intervention using intraday data:… Continue Reading

BIS Quarterly Review September 2013 – International banking and financial market developments

September 2013 Quarterly Review: Markets precipitate tightening, 15 September 2013 “Higher yields in advanced economies generated serious tremors in emerging markets. Cross-border claims of BIS reporting banks were broadly stable in the first quarter of 2013. Banks redirected lending from the advanced economies to emerging markets, especially to China, Brazil and Russia. Japanese banks returned… Continue Reading

Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012

“This report presents data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States based on information collected in the 2013 and earlier Current Population  Survey Annual Social and Economic  Supplements (CPS ASEC) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.  Summary of findings: Real median household income in 2012 was not statistically different from the 2011… Continue Reading

TRAC: Few ICE Detainers Target Serious Criminals

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: “Very timely case-by-case data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show that no more than 14 percent of the “detainers” issued by the government in FY 2012 and the first four months of FY 2013 met the agency’s stated goal of targeting individuals who pose a serious threat to public safety… Continue Reading

White House Report – The Financial Crisis: Five Years Later

Executive Office of the President, September 2013 “Five years ago this week, a financial crisis unlike any in generations rocked Wall Street, turning a recession that was already hammering Main Street into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In the months before President Obama took office, the economy was shrinking at a rate… Continue Reading