5 - Justice from Below

Summary

While the transitional justice model, and “bottom-up” business and human rights strategies place emphasis on the role international actors and powerful foreign courts in the Global North play in advancing victims’ demands for justice, victims of corporate complicity in past human rights violations have rarely received justice using that strategy. This chapter examines the role of national courts in responding to victims’ demands for corporate accountability. It also examines how the Archimedes’ Lever analogy produces “justice from below.”

The first part of the chapter examines “justice form below” through a cross-national comparative analysis. It identifies where, when, and what type of corporate accountability has been achieved.Italso considers where progress toward corporate accountability from below through domestic courts has not been achieved.The next section attempts to explain those outcomes, drawing on a continuum of accountability outcomes and case studies to illustrate our argument. The conclusion explores the transformative potential of domestic judicial action in shaping international human rights.It also sets forth a set of guidelines for implementing “justice from below.”