Éthique environnementale et droit des sociétés

Never before in the recent history of corporate law had environmental ethics been given such a prominent place in this field, which was traditionally presented as formal and autonomous, and closed in on its internal order. Over the last few years, corporate law has constantly opened up to environmental ethics and, more broadly, to social ethics. The traditional profit-making purpose of the company is now combined with non-economic purposes, linked to contemporary societal causes. On the other hand, deducing from this normative evolution, inspired by ethics, a concrete and perennial metamorphosis of behavior and stereotypes in companies is much more hazardous. An analysis from an economic law perspective might therefore shed valuable light on the subtle and complex links between environmental ethics and company law and on a way of effectively shifting the lines. This very stress-test of economic law forms the framework of this study.