Towards a theory on the international legal personality of corporations

Abstract

While international organisations have long been recognised as international legal persons, companies remain in a legal grey zone. Still, the situation of international organisations and companies also shows certain parallels. Attributing international legal status to powerful non-state actors threatens the status of states as primary subjects of international law that exercise ‘inherently sovereign’ functions’ and the ‘publicness’ of public international law per se. This article aims to contribute to the theory on personhood in international law by focusing on the enormous powers that corporations have exercised on the transnational and international plane, shaping our era into a Technocene. Corporations already have considerable rights in different international regimes, which they exercise below the radar of general international law. This article suggests moving towards a theory on the legal personality of corporations in international law, which combines insights from domestic law theories on corporate personhood with those on statehood and international organisationhood.