[p2p-research] [Commoning] important questions for the p2p movement

[j.martin.pedersen]

On 28/12/10 09:34, Brigitte Kratzwald wrote:
>>
>>> So in my opinion, enterprises can and must be commoners
>>
>> Enterprises? You mean entrepeneurs?
> 
> No, I mean enterprises - as juridical persons (is this correct English?) -
> because it are the enterprises that use resources, pollute water and air,
> etc. We should not reduce it to the individual responsibility of the
> entrepreneurs, but it should be part of the constitution of enterprises.

It is often just called "legal person" (as opposed to a natural person).

A "subversion" of the function of legal persons is an interesting idea,
as the concept has been debated and criticised for the very obvious
reason that it lets individuals commit crimes (or rather order them
committed) with impunity, hiding behind the corporation, yet actually
being the ones gaining from the illegal activities. (See also The
Corporation (book or film) for a perspective on how that legal person
acts in the social world).

For instance, “increasingly, global capital claims a new order of
international rights for itself in ways that have profound destructive
impacts on the human rights of human beings everywhere” (Baxi 2006: 258)

Critical voices:

Baxi, Upendra 2006 The Future of Human Rights (2nd edn). Oxford
University Press

Grear, Anna 2006 Human Rights – Human Bodies? Some Reflections on
Corporate Human Rights Distortion, The Legal Subject, Embodiment and
Human Rights. Theory Law and Critique 17 (2)

Grear, Anna 2007 Challenging corporate “humanity”: legal disembodiment,
embodiment and human rights. Human Rights Law Review 7 (3)

Uncritical:

Emberland, Marius 2006 The Human Rights of Companies: Exploring the
Structure of ECHR Protection. Oxford University Press

-martin