This chapter contemplates addressing changes in economic distributions within states from the vantage point of international law. It does this by considering the potential of recognising changing economic distributions within states and the adverse effects that flow therefrom as a ‘common concern of humankind’. At the outset, a contemporary conceptualization of the ‘distributive autonomy’ of states is provided in light of recent economic globalization. The process for recognising new common concerns of humankind is subsequently examined and theorised before the paper sets out the potential and utility of recognising a distributional common concern, arguing that the raison d’être for sovereignty, itself a constitutive element of common concerns, is the marshalling of the state in order to enhance the welfare of the individuals in a given society through the provision of peace and stability. The predominant utility of recognising a distributional common concern of humankind, then, would be to rebalance sovereignty in a manner that would place greater emphasis on effectively ensuring the welfare of humankind, something which can be better – or perhaps only – accomplished through international coordination and cooperation, actions which in and of themselves are less likely to occur under conditions of growing economic inequality within states.

Since the 1990s, notions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been shaped by the global diffusion of citizenship practices and the advent of a corporate sustainability community that encourages firms to improve their environmental and social performance.These understandings of CSR have recast corporate responsibility away from a liability model to one that places a moral obligation on firms to address the societal ills connected to global markets.We analyse the CSR reports of large German and US firms published from the mid-1990s to 2013 to gauge how multinational firms’ understandings of their obligations have evolved in light of this changing normative environment.We find that many firms have expanded how they define their responsibilities, but these global CSR norms have been grafted onto nationally determined notions of to whom corporations are responsible and on what basis. Despite these national differences, firms in both countries have engaged more substantively with environmental than social sustainability and are more likely to describe their responsibilities for the environment in terms of an ethics of care.