ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lucas Roorda

Lucas Roorda is assistant professor at Utrecht Law School, Department of International and European Law, and researcher at the Utrecht Center for Accountability and Liability Law (Ucall). He specializes in corporate accountability for human rights violations and the role of domestic procedures in enforcing international standards.
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POSTS BY Lucas Roorda

28 November 2022

Lucas Roorda

Inequality of Harms, Inequality of Arms

On November 8th 2022 Channa Samkalden, lawyer for Esther Kiobel and three other widows of executed Nigerian community leaders, announced that her clients would be ending their lawsuit against Shell. Uncertainty about the outcome, combined with the fact that the case had already been (unsuccessfully) going on for over 20 years in multiple fora, had made the four widows decide to withdraw the appeal, “not without disappointment and frustration”. In this blog, I discuss this case's remarkable procedural history and why it, set against the particular facts of the case, illustrates the fundamental procedural unfairness between large corporations and victims trying to hold them to account. Continue reading >>