Private International Law and the Interlegality of Global Value Chain Due Diligence

This chapter explores the evolving role of private international law in shaping and regulating global value chains (GVCs), particularly in the context of emerging due diligence legislation such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Moving beyond a conception of private international law as primarily coordinating access to courts and applicable law to due diligence disputes, the chapter argues that it plays a constitutive role in enabling corporate governance strategies and regulatory arbitrage within GVCs. Moreover, it proposes that due diligence frameworks are reflective of and inspired by the intellectual style of private international law. Looked at through the prism of ‘interlegality’, that is the dynamic interplay of multiple legal orders, norms, and institutional logics across jurisdictions, due diligence emerges as a legal mode of engaging with fragmented and overlapping normative frameworks along GVCs. Private international law then offers a jurisprudential framework to address the complexities and normative tensions arising from these laws’ extraterritorial reach and polycentric governance.