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Corporations are contested legal entities. Many see them merely as vehicles for financial and business elites to acquire and maintain unfettered power. In this paper, I look at the relationship between corporate power and corporate structures, and argue that corporate power is importantly located in the exploitation of the principles of separate personality of corporate entities and shareholder limited liability. Courts' unwillingness to pierce the corporate veil and to extend the liability of parent company/principal to the acts of a subsidiary/agent contributes to enabling the creation and exploitation of corporate networks. This is particularly problematic when the corporate creditors are tort victims, who do not assent to limited liability through voluntary transactions. The argument is supported by empirical evidence of the strategies of three asbestos firms to avoid accountability for their tortious conduct. These strategies were curbed only by recourse to criminal law by holding corporate personnel directly responsible for their corporate activities in question and by boycott and political mobilization.

While international law has recognised a human right to science since 1948, the binding normative content of this right still needs to be clarified and specified. It is rarely discussed by states when they report on their obligations under the various international human rights treaties (UN and ICESCR), and receives scant attention by international human rights bodies. To advance our understanding of this under-studied and under-appreciated right, this chapter offers an overview of ways in which the right to science can be advanced and realised. The chapter is divided into three parts: the first section discusses the recognition of the right to science under international and regional legal instruments; the second presents a literature review; and the third discusses the use (mobilisation) of international adjudicative and political forums to advance the right to science and to shape its normative content.