There is a common assumption that corporate law is politically and socially neutral. Dr. Liao will discuss how these ostensibly neutral doctrines and norms – such as shareholder wealth maximization, contractarian models of the firm, and voluntary disclosure reporting – are deeply shaped by patriarchal and colonial power structures. She argues that these governance frameworks systematically externalize climate harms while obscuring responsibility for their inequitable and disproportionate impacts – particularly on Indigenous peoples and their territories, across racialized communities, through gender-differentiated effects, and via structurally uneven burdens imposed on the Global South, as well as on poor, elderly, disabled, and other historically marginalized groups. By reframing climate injustice as a predictable outcome of corporate legal design rather than regulatory failure, she calls for a re-imagining of corporate accountability through feminist principles of substantive equality, care, and intersectional justice.
Join us on Thursday, February 26th for a Faculty Colloquium with Dr. Carol Liao. The Allard School of Law Faculty Colloquium Series features research talks and discussions by invited speakers and faculty members.
For Zoom details, email: eventassistant@allard.ubc.ca
Speaker
Dr. Carol Liao is an Associate Professor at Allard Law and the Distinguished Fellow of the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at the UBC Sauder School of Business. Her research focuses on corporate law and sustainability, climate governance, and social justice. She is the Co-Director (Academic) of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice and the Chair and Principal Co-Investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative, dedicated to advancing director knowledge on the latest in climate risks and fiduciary obligations.
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