How can we hold corporations to their human rights obligations? When it comes to multinational asbestos-mining corporations such as Cape and James Hardie, do arguments of forum non conveniens and separate legal personality hold up? Could a simple claim in negligence be the best way to redress human rights violations?
In this episode, Just Cause co-director and LLB V student Eamonn Murphy speaks with Professor David Kinley, the Chair in Human Rights Law at Sydney Law School, about the intersection between corporate responsibility and human rights law. Drawing from David’s new book, In a Rain of Dust: Death, Deceit and the Lawyer Who Busted Big Asbestos, we consider the case of Lubbe v Cape, brought in 1995 by grassroots lawyer Richard Meeran against Cape Plc, a British company that mined and milled asbestos in apartheid-era South Africa, causing innumerable deaths from asbestos-related diseases among local workers and their communities. While the case is largely seen as one about jurisdiction in private international law and tort liability in the context of a corporate group, we examine what it has to say about human rights — how, as David phrases it, can you cut a human rights cloth? Find out in this episode!
Professor David Kinley holds the Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Sydney Law School. He is also an Academic Expert Member of Doughty Street Chambers in London, a member of the Australian Council for Human Rights, a member of the Human Rights Council of Australia and a board member of Cisarua, an Afghan refugee-led education centre located in Bogor, Indonesia.
