The Soft Law Regulatory System Of The Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility theory originated in America in the early twentieth century. And now it has become a hot issue which attracts the international community’s common attention and active practices. With the rise of corporate social responsibility, the real practice is in urgent need of relevant laws and regulations’guidance and regulation. Soft law, as a strong driving force, plays a important role in realize the corporate social responsibility. But due to the lack of coercive power of state, soft law’s function on regulation of corporate social responsibility becomes uncertain. To break the predicaments and achieve the effect of soft law, we might as well try to combine both soft law and judicial activism, play the function of soft law and hard law together, and explore suitable path to achieve Chinese corporate social responsibility.This paper consists of three parts:The first part is about the origin and the development of corporate social responsibility. The earliest idea was traced back to ancient Greece, but modern theory of corporate social responsibility appeared in the 1920s. Corporate social responsibility has evolved from economic liability theory, moral liability theory, legal liability theory to transcendental liability theory. In 1990s, corporate social responsibility theory began to spread in China and drew great attention of all circles of society. Some enterprises began to undertake corporate social responsibility. In general, the study and practice of corporate social responsibility in our country are currently in the initial stage.The second part is to analyze the validity and feasibility of soft regulation on corporate social responsibility. Soft law is more flexible than hard law. Using soft law to regulate corporate social responsibility can overcome the limitation of hard law and moral restraint. Besides it not only helps the enterprises to be self-discipline, but also helps to reduce management costs and save social resources. Meanwhile, since soft law has internal relations with corporate social responsibility, so it is feasible to regulate corporate social responsibility with soft law.The third part is to discuss the relation between judicial activism and soft regulation on corporate social responsibility. The core of judicial activism is the exercise of judicial discretion. During the process of the soft regulation on corporate social responsibility, due to the lack of coercive power of state, it’s uncertain that enterprises’ actions of undertaking the social responsibility could be effective and feasible. So with the introduction of judicial activism into soft regulation on corporate social responsibility, some problems can be solved to some extent, which is necessary and feasible. But now in China, to achieve this objective, there are still several respects in the need of reform and improvement.