CSR: The Tale of an International, European, and Domestic Law Concept

Corporate Social Responsibility ("CSR") is a concept that is very differently represented in legal literature, according to the divers perspectives from which it has been considered. One way to look at it is as the means by which a responsible conduct is to be integrated into the strategy of companies. CSR resides as such in a mixture of international texts and principles, European initiatives as well as internal regulations, with both soft and hard law versions. Though mostly made up of soft law, CSR rules may anytime become legally binding, evolution that is paradoxical in itself: What we are going to do in this paper is, thus, argue that, instead of concentrating on an artificial divide between the soft law and hard law sources of CSR, it would be better to think of practical approaches to it. SRSG John Ruggie's proposal made in the UN "Protect, Respect and Remedy" Framework for human rights due diligence would be a solution, as it is offering a more appropriate, practical risk management approach to CSR. As such, one may no longer accuse CSR of creating "optional" obligations, irrespective of its soft or hard law sources.