Visitors
Debadatta Bose
Debadatta Bose is a Hauser Postdoctoral Global Fellow at NYU School of Law whose work is prominent in the global discourse on corporate human rights responsibility. His current research focuses on private law and business law while also engaging with international law. His widely cited research includes over 15 publications in major law reviews like Brooklyn Law Review, peer reviewed journals like ICSID Review and Business and Human Rights Journal, and his co-edited volume with Cambridge University Press, The Cambridge Handbook of Law and Responsible Business. The bulk of his scholarship investigates how law can be transformed from a tool of erasure of corporate human rights harms into one that empowers people as meaningful rightsholders. Reflecting its broader influence, his work is both taught in courses across the United States and Europe, and also was used by European governments in designing the EU corporate sustainability law.
At NYU, Debadatta will work on two projects. His first project, “Rights Over Remedies” contributes to tort and remedies literature by revisualizing private law rights of action as epistemic rights beyond purely compensatory uses of litigation. This project seeks to theorize why victims of corporate human rights abuses choose to sue corporations even when they know no compensation is forthcoming. This piece builds on his Brooklyn Law Review article, Postcolonial Private Law, that brings conversations on political and economic power into classical private law theory. Debadatta’s second project argues that Caremark doctrine, which articulates oversight duties of the board of directors, requires the board to assess and mitigate risks to third parties rather than merely to the corporation itself. This theory demonstrates the synergy between the Delaware corporate governance framework and EU corporate sustainability laws.
Prior to joining NYU, Debadatta was The Robbins Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He earned his PhD in Law from the University of Amsterdam. He holds an LLM (cum laude) from Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and completed his BA and first law degree from Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University, India, graduating first in his class in both his LLM and first law degrees. He has taught private law, business law and international law courses across the United States and Europe. He has also been invited to talk about corporate governance and ESG law to business executives and civil society advocates, translating his research across a wide variety of audiences.
Research Project: Rights Over Remedies
Megan Pfiffer
Megan Pfiffer is a Postdoctoral Global Fellow affiliated with the Center for Law and Philosophy. Her research interests span the fields of public law, and moral, political, and legal theory. Megan obtained her SJD from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law. Her thesis articulated a theory of the law of judicial review of administrative action built around the rights of persons subject to public administrative power. Megan received her JD from Queen's University where she was awarded the Silver Medal in Law for achieving the second highest academic standing in her graduating class, as well as the Dean's Key Award for best embodying the signature values of Queen's Law. She then articled at a leading Toronto litigation firm and clerked for Justice Rosalie Abella at the Supreme Court of Canada. After her clerkship, Megan completed the BCL at the University of Oxford with distinction, earning the Onora O'Neill Prize in Philosophy, Law and Politics
Research Project: The Modern Administrative State: A Moral Defence