Teachers Talk LawNow – Corporate Social Responsibility

LawNow magazine is an incredible resource for teachers. Each issue offers engaging articles about law in language suitable for students. Teachers Talk LawNow is a series of lesson plans for teachers based on these articles. 

LawNow Articles Relating to Corporate Social Responsibility:

• What is Wrong with Corruption? – Peter Bowal and Christopher Bowal
• The Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility – Janet Keeping
• Lessons Learned from the British Petroleum Disaster – Jeff Bone
• International Corporate Political Corruption: the Case of Niko Resources Ltd. – Peter Bowal and Joshua Beckie
• Chevron Corp. v. Naranjo: Goliath’s Global Anti-Enforcement Injunction against David – The Court, an initiative of the Osgoode Hall Law School.

These articles provide the opportunity to explore a wide range of topics including transnational corporations, environmental law, government regulation, and free market economies. The articles can be approached from a variety of perspectives. For example, they can be studied within the context of globalization or with a greater emphasis on economics. The articles could also be used to create a unit in language arts that concludes with a persuasive essay.

Jigsaw Activity

1. Divide students into five groups and provide them with one of the articles listed above. Each group will create a summary of their article based on a guiding question drawn from your lesson objectives. For example:

• What are some of the undesired consequences of free markets and how can governments, corporations, and companies limit them?
• What relationship, if any, does economic and political globalization have with corruption?

2. When the groups have finished their summaries assign the members of each group a number between one and five. Create new groups using these numbers. Students will then teach their new group about the article they helped to summarize.

3. When the group activity is complete, students will then work independently on a writing assignment. The guiding question from the beginning of the lesson can be used as the topic for a formal essay.

Extension Activities

The project could also be supplemented with a film study. Some suitable documentaries with similar themes include:

• Bananas!;
• Capitalism a Love Story;
• The Corporation; and
• Food Inc.