Business and Human Rights in the New Era: Class Actions and Public Class Actions’ Fund as a Missing Link

My paper describes the class actions’ mechanism and the activities of the Class Action Fund in Israel, while analyzing its broader normative and theoretical applications and its “contribution” to the erosion of the distinction between public and private law, as well its relationship with the phenomenon of corporate human rights responsibility. The Israeli Fund finances class actions that have “public and social importance” in regards to their submission, and is almost a world precedent, and therefore can be seen as a kind of “laboratory” for some of the normative issues that can be used in other legal systems. In addition, the article discusses the connection between class actions and the international discourse on human rights and corporations – led by the “Protect, Respect and Remedy” framework in the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business Human Rights and the 2014 “Accountability and Remedy Project” initiative.