다국적 기업 공급망에서의 책임 귀속의 문제 - 법인격 부인론과 공급망 책임 이론을 중심으로 -

This article introduces two principal legal theories concerning the liability of multinational corporations (MNCs) for human rights violations and environmental harms occurring within global supply chains: the traditional doctrine of piercing the corporate veil and the emerging theory of supply chain responsibility developed in recent English case law. The global supply chain is typically structured through multilayered subcontracting, outsourcing, and delegation contracts. Within this structure, ‘buyer’ often exercises substantial control over the labor and resources of lower-tier suppliers, yet evade legal responsibility by invoking the doctrines of separate legal personality and contractual independence. Tragic events such as the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh exemplify how this structural fragmentation allows MNCs to avoid liability, despite the occurrence of unlawful conduct by subsidiaries or suppliers. Accordingly, this paper first introduces the theoretical background and application requirements of the traditional disregard of legal entity theory, the implications of global supply chain responsibility in terms of legal entity and limited liability, and compares the supply chain responsibility theory developed to circumvent the limitations of the disregard of legal entity theory and the principle of negligence responsibility. Supply chain responsibility is defined through the UN principles of implementing human rights on due diligence obligations, which are the theoretical background of supply chain responsibility theory, and introduces the process by which supply chain responsibility theory has been accepted through the Chandler v. Cape, Vedanta v. Lungowe, Okpabi v. Royal Dutch Shell case. Finally, even if the Supply Chain Due Dilligence Law is enacted, I would like to conclude the paper by deriving the implications that the theory of denial of legal personality and supply chain responsibility theory can function as a general and comprehensive theory of corporate responsibility for the supply chain.