Back to All Events

Lifting the Corporate Veil on China’s State-Owned Enterprises

Recorded on March 17, 2021.

Lifting the Corporate Veil on China’s State-Owned Enterprises

About this event:
State-owned enterprises are increasingly important international actors because of their growing size and impact on the global economy, but they pose a challenge to international law. States are traditionally held responsible only for their own conduct. In principle, the corporate veil would have to be lifted for a home state to be held responsible for the conduct of its SOEs abroad. Professor Baetens will talk about the challenges this presents to the WTO and international investment and human rights law.

Further reading

About the speaker:
Freya Baetens is professor of public international law at the PluriCourts Centre at Oslo University. She is also affiliated with the Europa Institute at Leiden University and has been a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law in Luxembourg and other leading institutes and universities. As a Member of the Brussels Bar, she regularly acts as counsel or expert in international and European disputes. She is specialized in the law of treaties, responsibility of states and international organizations, privileges and immunities, law of the sea, WTO and investment law, energy law, and sustainable development.

Moderator:
Robert Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at NYU School of Law. Professor Howse received his B.A. in philosophy and political science with high distinction, as well as an LL.B., with honors, from the University of Toronto, where he was co-editor in chief of the Faculty of Law Review. He also holds an LL.M. from the Harvard Law School. He has been a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne), Tsinghua University, and Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada and taught in the Academy of European Law, European University Institute, Florence.