Book launch – ‘Tort Litigation against Transnational Corporations’ by Dr Ekaterina Aristova

The Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and the Oxford Business and Human Rights Network are delighted to host the launch of ‘Tort Litigation against Transnational Corporations: The Challenge of Jurisdiction in the English Courts’ (OUP 2024) by Dr Ekaterina Aristova. This event is convened with the support of and in collaboration with the Conflict of Laws Discussion Group and the Obligations Discussion Group, and the Oxford Business and Human Rights Network and Discussion Group.

There is an emerging trend of private claims being brought against parent companies of transnational corporations for their alleged involvement in human rights and environmental abuses committed abroad. These cases form part of an international effort aimed at strengthening responsible business conduct, the success of which depends on the rules governing domestic courts’ power to adjudicate disputes. However, in an increasingly globalised environment, the territorial focus of the adjudicative jurisdiction is often contrary to the transnational nature of the business activities. Tort Litigation against Transnational Corporations offers a new angle to the business and human rights discourse by placing the discussion of parent company liability cases in the context of the topical debate about the changing role of private international law in a globalised world.

Dr Ekaterina Aristova

Ekaterina is an academic and a lawyer specialising in the field of business and human rights. Her work focuses on strategic human rights and environmental litigation. She examines how conventional private law doctrines evolve in response to global challenges and are used creatively in different jurisdictions to foster human rights and environmental accountability. Ekaterina is a co-editor of ‘Civil Remedies and Human Rights in Flux’ (Hart Publishing 2022) and ‘Civil Liability for Human Rights Violations: A Handbook for Practitioners’ (Bonavero Institute of Human Rights 2022). Since 2019, Ekaterina has been a Research Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (Faculty of Law, University of Oxford), where she convenes a course ‘Business and Human Rights - Real World Accountability’ and supervises postgraduate students. In 2022, she was awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to complete a project on climate change litigation against corporations.

Professor Kate O'Regan

Kate O'Regan is the inaugural Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and a former judge of the South African Constitutional Court (1994 – 2009). In the mid-1980s she practiced as a lawyer in Johannesburg in a variety of fields, but especially labour law and land law, representing many of the emerging trade unions and their members, as well as communities threatened with eviction under apartheid land laws.  In 1990, she joined the Faculty of Law at UCT where she taught a range of courses including race, gender and the law, labour law, civil procedure and evidence. Since her fifteen-year term at the South African Constitutional Court ended in 2009,  she has amongst other things served as an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court of Namibia (from 2010 - 2016), Chairperson of the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into allegations of police inefficiency and a breakdown in trust between the police and the community of Khayelitsha (2012 – 2014), and as a member of the boards or advisory bodies of many NGOs working in the fields of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and equality.

Richard Meeran

Richard Meeran is a partner at Leigh Day and co-head of the firm’s international department. Richard pioneered the firm’s ground-breaking cases against UK multinationals: Connelly v RTZ (Namibian uranium miner); Ngcobo & Sithole & Others v Thor Chemicals (South African mercury poisoning victims); Lubbe & others v Cape PLC (7,500 South African asbestos victims). Between 2004 and 2008, he worked with Slater & Gordon in Melbourne, where he initiated the VIOXX class action litigation against Merck. In 2008, he returned to Leigh Day in London, where he ran the Peruvian alleged torture victims’ litigation against Monterrico Metals, which involved obtaining a worldwide freezing injunction before the case settled (without admission of liability) in July 2011. In September 2013, working in conjunction with the South African Legal Resources Centre, he obtained a landmark settlement of 23 test cases against Anglo-American South Africa. Richard was the 2002 winner of the Liberty/Justice Human Rights Lawyer of the Year Award.

Professor Adrian Briggs 

Adrian Briggs was from 1980 to 2021 Fellow and Tutor in Law at St Edmund Hall, and Professor of Private International Law. His main interest was, and still is, in private international law. Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments (7 editions) was the most established, and The Conflict of Laws (5 editions), in the Clarendon series, the book that told the story of the subject. His own take on the subject in what had become its hybrid, Euro-common law character, was set out and published in 2015 as Private International Law in English Courts; it was unwritten and rewritten in 2022. Otherwise, his Private International Law in Myanmar (2015) and The Law of Contract in Myanmar (jointly with Andrew (now Lord) Burrows (2017)) served to provide an alternative, and utterly absorbing, intellectual challenge, though the joy of teaching in Myanmar had, after 2020, to be replaced by the poor substitute of zooming to Myanmar; and is now, as unspeakable evil stalks the land, wholly impossible.

He also practises from chambers in the Temple, latterly with the title of KC (Hon).

Dr Tara Van Ho 

Dr Tara Van Ho is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Essex Law School and Human Rights Centre. Together with Dr Anil Yilmaz Vastardis, she is co-Director of the Essex Business and Human Rights Project, which uses academic research to advance practical guidance for states, businesses, and non-governmental organisations in the area of Business and Human Rights.