Extraterritorial court jurisdiction in the corporate anthropocene: a comparative enquiry

Corporations are notoriously powerful actors in the current configuration of our globalised economy. As such, they have assumed a key role in shaping a new age of ecological precarity—the Anthropocene. Indeed, the transnational scope of corporate activities often results in environmental harm elsewhere on the planet. Disheartened by host states’ perceived inability to deliver environmental justice locally, several recent lawsuits have tested the willingness of European home state judiciaries to adjudicate the extraterritorial conduct of domestic corporations. The fate of such litigation crucially hinges upon a procedural legal modality: jurisdiction. This thesis investigates when, how, and why European courts assume jurisdiction over civil environmental wrongs centred abroad (extraterritorial jurisdiction). Methodologically, it analyses two legal sagas in the UK (Lungowe v Vedanta) and the Netherlands (Akpan et al. v Shell) and contrasts these to a third lawsuit in Germany (Lliuya v RWE). This comparative enquiry reveals the contingency of extraterritorial jurisdiction as a socio-legal construct, as well as its opportunities and limits in confronting the corporate Anthropocene. Ultimately, the advent of unilateral judicial interventions in the environmental affairs of other countries raises concerns over the international and institutional legitimacy of such an exercise. In order to dispel these concerns, a re-imagination of the role and functionality of jurisdiction within an increasingly polycentric environmental governance landscape is required.