Shifting boundaries: a transnational legal perspective on the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive

Abstract

Aiming to address harmful impacts of transnational business operations, legislation requiring companies to exercise human rights and environmental due diligence is on the rise in several jurisdictions. This article examines the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and its obligations on large companies domiciled or operating in the EU to cascade demands drawn from international soft law onto business partners, including those in third countries, as examples of transnational law. Emphasising the international law origin of the risk-based due diligence approach, it demonstrates that the CSDDD fits the understanding of transnational law as being public law, targeting private actors, concerned with human rights and the environment in the context of business operations, and inducing companies to advance the normative ideals drawn from international law through private forms of law targeting value chains operations. Moreover, it outlines implication for evolving transnational law theory to accommodate the proliferation of such laws.