Upcoming Book Release: Corporate
Social Responsibility – A Legal Analysis

March 19, 2009 / Montreal, Canada

The CISDL is proud to announce the upcoming release of the book Corporate Social Responsibility - A Legal Analysis published by LexisNexis. CISDL fellows, Michael Kerr and Richard Janda, along with co-author and editor Chip Pitts, have authored the first comprehensive legal text on global CSR.

Pre-Order your copy NOW at
LexisNexis.

“The role of the corporation goes beyond providing individual benefits to its shareholders; it also includes a responsibility towards a wider community.”

From the Preface by The Honourable Charles Doherty Gonthier, retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Corporations now face greater scrutiny
regarding their environmental, social, and economic activities. Accounting firms and consultancies use increasingly sophisticated tools to verify corporate undertakings. Socially responsible investment funds screen corporate performance, and failure to perform even affects share price. By ignoring the legal context or viewing CSR measures as merely voluntary, a corporation can expose itself to clear financial and legal liability.

Corporate Social Responsibility
A Legal Analysis examines the hard and soft laws that ground CSR to show that responsible corporate behaviour has become a matter of important legal concern
for virtually every corporation. This book answers four essential questions: What is CSR? What is driving it? What are the legal dimensions of CSR? What are its likely future legal developments?

The authors address these issues with common-law examples from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, as well as European Union law and developments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Their analysis compares how national laws, international treaties, and voluntary initiatives differently reflect the seven CSR principles they have identified — principles of critical importance to corporations operating in multiple jurisdictions.

With contributing authors the Honourable Charles
Gonthier, Jason MacLean and Roman Picherack.

Corporate Social Responsibility, Global Financial Markets & International Legal Developments