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I have spent the
past two days at West Virginia University attending a conference entitled “Business
and Human Rights: Moving Forward and Looking Back.” This was not a bunch of academic
do-gooders fantasizing about imposing new corporate social responsibilities on
multinationals. The conference was supported by the UN Working Group on
Business and Human Rights, and attendees and speakers included the State
Department (which has a dedicated office for business and human rights), the Department
of Labor, nongovernmental organizations, economists, ethicists, academics,
members of the extractive industry (defined as oil, gas and mining),
representatives from small and medium sized enterprises (“SMEs”), Proctor and
Gamble, and Monsanto.

Professor Jena
Martin organized the conference after the UN Working Group visited West
Virginia earlier this year to learn more about SMEs and human rights issues.
She invited participants to help determine how to ground the 2011
UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights into business practices
and move away from theory to the operational level. The nonbinding Guiding
Principles outline the state duty to protect human rights, the corporate duty
to respect human rights, and both the state and corporations’ duty to provide
judicial and non-judicial remedies to aggrieved parties.  Transnational corporations…

Next week (September 29th to be exact) an
experimental free-trade zone in Shanghai will open, the first of its kind in
mainland China.  The free trade zone
boasts the possibility for relaxed trade and foreign investment standards.  Just how radical the free trade zone will be
in its implementation is unknown, and will unfold as the operations being.  Allowing telecommunications companies to
compete with state-owned providers, lifting bans on video game sales, liberalizing
interest rates, and enhancing currency convertibility are among the stated
goals of the free trade zone. 
Additionally, a Hong Kong newspaper (note: Hong Kong is itself a free
trade zone) reported yesterday that Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times and
other previously banned websites will be allowed to operate within the free
trade zone.

Enhancing currency convertibility is a broader goal of
China, which has stated its intention for the renminbi to be fully convertible
by 2015.  Currency convertibility may in
turn elevate the renminbi to reserve currency status, where the central banks
of other countries hold the renminbi. 
Reserve currencies—the leader of which is the U.S. dollar and also
includes the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen, the sterling pound and the euro—benefit
the issuing country…

Interesting news today that North Dakota may not actually be a proper state.  It seems that the state’s constitution lacks a requirement that the state’s executive officers uphold the U.S. Constitution, thus violating Article VI.  

If the state is not really a state, then would that mean that corporations under “state” law are not really formed either? Would the fictional corporate person suddenly become a fictional, fictional person? Heady stuff.  

Add to this the fact that most of the state is violating North Dakota law by reporting that the flooding in Minot (the western part of the state) is caused by the Souris River, using the French (and Canadian) name, rather than the English (and state-mandated) name, the Mouse River.

Even if most people are getting name of the river that is causing the flooding wrong, the flooding is very, very real. Please help if you can. Here are a couple places:  http://minotfloodshirts.myminto.com/ and http://minotredcross.org/.

–JPF

Whether it’s energy policy or financial policy, “people” want to be protected from bad things.  Things like blackouts, high gas prices, housing bubbles and failed credit markets.  But we also, apparently, want these things to occur cost free.  It’s not clear to me whether “people” are the masses or our representatives in government, but it doesn’t seem to matter. 

Take, for example, discussions about cybersecurity.  One report indicates that at least some in Congress believe our greatest national security threat is to the electric power grid.  In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, ABC News quotes Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz. as saying the following about a national grid cyber attack:  

The sobering reality is this vulnerability, if left unaddressed, could have grave, societal-altering consequences. We face a menace that may represent the gravest short term threat to the peace and security of the human family in the world today.

Wow. That’s a huge deal. And I agree it is a serious threat, even though I wouldn’t go quite that far.  

To address these concerns, one of the legislative proposals is the GRID Act (H.R. 5206), proposed last year. That act:

Amends the Federal Power Act

…

Robert Krulwich, on his NPR blog, writes that that people are “pattern-finding animals.”  He goes on to say:

Do any of us live beyond pattern? Do great musicians, breakthrough artists, great athletes operate pattern free? Pattern indifferent?

I don’t think so. Artists may be, oddly, the most pattern-aware. Case in point: The totally unpredictable, one-of-a-kind novelist Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater) once gave a lecture in which he presented — in graphic form — the basic plots of all the world’s great stories. Every story you’ve ever heard, he said, are reflections of a few, classic story shapes. They are so elementary, he said, he could draw them on an X/Y axis.

The site then has a link (here) to a short excerpt of a talk from Kurt Vonnegut that is worth a look. (I think, anyway, but I am huge Vonnegut fan.) 

What does this have to do with business law?  Well, maybe not that much, but it seems relevant to me in the context of the discussion about the recent, but not new, concerns about law reviews Steve Bradford, Stephen Bainbridge, and others are talking about.  The current…