«Il n‘y a pas un monde développé et un monde sous-développé, mais un seul monde mal développé»
This book, comprising some 500 pages, whose author is a professor of private international law specialized in the globalization of law and of international affairs, is the first book in French devoted to transnational law.
If its second part (the practice and theory of transnational law), by virtue of its theoretical and technical character, is intended mostly for legal professionals, its first part, on the other hand (the rules of transnational law), comport numerous examples and case studies, and can be read with ease and interest by the general public.
By presenting the rules of transnational private law, the author focuses in particular on the phenomena of off-shoring and sub-contracting, which are inherent in the organization of contemporary world capital. He cites in this regard the example of the NIKE corporation whose entire production is sub-contracted on a world-wide scale, through a systematic use of sub-contracting. This model became current in the 1980s for the major textile corporations. The author demonstrates that these modes of organization are in reality functions of choice of law, the sub-contractors being located in countries where labor laws are the “least costly”.
The author devotes considerable and interesting pages to criticism of “public-private partnerships” (PPPs) promoted by the United Nations since the 1990s, which resulted in the “Global Compact” of 2000, then the 2011 “Guiding Principle on Business and Human Rights”, which exhort TNCs to respect human rights on a “voluntary” basis. He also evokes the proposal of the Ecuadorian government, backed by many NGOs (including the CETIM), regarding the drafting of a binding treaty to oblige TNCs to respect human rights and to compensate the victims for harm they have suffered.
