Corporate scholars, writ large, have made a variety of scholarly interventions into the work that corporate, securities, and commercial law might be asked to do in the area of corporate social responsibility. For a relatively recent intervention in this field, see the work of Galit Sarfaty, “Human Rights Meets Securities Regulation”, which is a fine illustration of this strand of engagement. Galit’s primary focus is the question of whether securities regulation is an appropriate mechanism for compelling human rights compliance. More specifically, she focuses on the Dodd-Frank Act, a piece of legislation that was adopted in 2010 in the United States, and which has garnered significant attention (and some directed criticism). The legislation imposes reporting requirements on publicly traded companies that manufacture products using conflict minerals that originated in the Democratic Republic of Congo and bordering countries, and requires natural resources companies to disclose particular payments made to governments for the commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals. Galit also explores the value of regulatory convergence in securities regulation, at least in this area.

Galit Sarfaty holds a CRC in Global Economic Governance at UBC’s faculty of law. Her scholarly work builds on her interdisciplinary interests at the nexus of law and anthropology. She often employs ethnographic methods to explore the decision making and regulatory processes at work within legal institutions.