The Bumpy Road of Home States’ Regulation of Globalized Businesses—Legal and Institutional Disruptions to Supply Chain Disclosure under the Modern Slavery Act

In response to the paradigm shift from territorial corporations to global businesses and supply chains, states are increasingly engaging in regulating extraterritorial business activities, supply chain disclosure regulation being a primary example. Much ink has thus far spilled on the intrinsic doctrinal and conceptual aspects of this regulatory approach, with its interactions to the external regulatory and institutional environment far less considered. This article seeks to correct the scholarly imbalance by critically examining how s.54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) – a prominent attempt among state-level initiatives designed to promote human rights protection within global supply chains – fits with other extraterritorial initiatives and the broad supply chain environment in which it operates. An exploration of the likely disruptive effects on the enforcement of supply chain disclosure regulation follows thereafter. The paper intends to bring to light the doctrinal, contextual and practical complexities faced by current home-state lawmaking endeavors, in the hope of generating further insights into the intricate but significant issue of imposing human rights responsibilities on globalized businesses