The Ethics of Global Business

Chapter FiveOn the Division of Moral Labor for Human Rights Between States and Corporations

Status Egalitarianism and State Obligations

Harvard Professor Nieh‐hê Hsieh has argued that corporations should not be understood to have human rights obligations because, as private actors, corporations are not the proper type of institutions to protect status egalitarianism in society (Hsieh 2015). Hsieh argues that “if we take as central to human rights the ideal of status egalitarianism, then there is reason to reject assigning human rights obligations to MNEs and their managers” (Hsieh 2015, 219). His discussion of status egalitarianism, or the equal standing of citizens, is derivative of the work of Allen Buchanan whose explicit focus is the international legal human rights system. Buchanan characterizes status egalitarianism as “a robust commitment to affirming and protecting the equal basic moral status of all individuals” and he quite reasonably argues that status egalitarianism is an important “aspect” of the international legal human rights system (Buchanan 2013, 27, 29–30).

Hsieh argues that TNCs do not have human rights obligations for two reasons. First, “to assign human rights obligations to MNEs is to ask them to adopt a perspective of impartiality and equal treatment that seems not only overly demanding but also incompatible with what is required of private actors in the realm of economic activity” (Hsieh 2015, 226). Hsieh does not argue for this claim or explain why ...