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"Preface by Stephen Tully" [2005] ELECD 194; in Tully, Stephen (ed), "Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility

Editor(s): Tully, Stephen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843768203

Section Title: Preface by Stephen Tully

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

Preface
Stephen Tully



This preface will not aspire to summarise what follows but merely attempts to
locate each chapter within an overall narrative around the issue of corporate
legal responsibility, sensitise readers to degrees of corporate responsiveness,
point out evolving models of regulation or novel organisational forms and
draw attention to distinctive stylistic features. It is evident that prospective
liability remains a fundamental business consideration, perhaps second only to
competitive pressures arising from the marketplace for the influence exerted
over commercial behaviour. Recent years have seen, for example, the passage
of the Sarbanes­Oxley Act in the United States following in the wake of the
Enron collapse, the Prestige oil tanker disaster off the Spanish coast during
2002 and the Global Compact emanating from the United Nations. Their
common thread is the proposition that corporations must bear a responsibility
commensurate with their prominent social role, significant operational
impacts and substantial economic privileges. That said, the notion of corporate
legal responsibility is one of considerable vintage. Indeed, the merchants of
antiquity well-appreciated the necessity for contractual enforcement and the
orderly conduct of commercial affairs prior to the emergence of the modern
nation state.
In the contemporary era the question of legal responsibility is being swept
aside by renewed interest in so-called `corporate social responsibility'. It is
currently fashionable to call upon companies to `go beyond legal compliance'
in a diverse range of social, economic and environmental fields. The termi-
nology of `must', `should', `can' and `will not' have begun ...