International legal personality of multinational corparations

The debate of whether international law is a branch of law which is only in concern with the legal relations between and among states has often been cited for the last century, particularly in the wake of the Second World War. A variety of views on the nature of the relationship between international law and various collective persons or natural persons encompassed by the broad term non-state actors lie at the heart of this debate. In this context, on one side of the coin, there are efforts for not shaking the theoretical foundations of modern international law built on the state-centric premises, while there are also efforts for being able to address the contemporary necessities of the international community, of which dynamics have been transformed with the globalization process, on the other side of the same coin. In fact, the main reason lying behind the emergence of a quite rich but uncertain doctrine dealing with the topic of international legal personality is the quest for striking the right balance between these irreconcilable efforts. The most powerful non-state actor, which thus shapes the necessities and affects the stability of the international community most, of the modern international order is multinational corporations which are operating their commercial activities all over the world. In a global order in which the whole world almost became a single market and most of the commerical activities have been "privatized", the power accumulated in the hands of multinational corporations raised the important questions of how to supervise those corporations and the limits of the rights granted to them. Unsuprisingly, the natural discussion ground for these questions has been the international legal personality theories. This work which is consisted of three main chapters aims to tackle the issue of the international legal personality of multinational corporations with different aspects. In the first chapter, the concept of multinational corporations and their development against the backdrop of the globalisation are loosely discussed. In the second chapter, the international legal personality theories, all of which attempt for accomodating non-state actors in international law, are explained. In the final chapter, the international legal personality of multinational corporations is scrutinized pursuant to the international legal personality theory adopted by the author. Keywords: Multinational Corporations, Non-state Actors, International Legal Personality Theories, Globalization, Transnational Law