Dr Malcolm Rogge

Dr Malcolm Rogge is a Business and Human Rights scholar and practitioner, as well as an international award-winning documentary filmmaker. He welcomes graduate research proposals in diverse fields, including business and human rights law; the rights of nature; corporate law and governance; international economic law; law and film; law and philosophy; human rights; and law and the humanities (including human rights and visual culture).

Dr Rogge is a Senior Advisor to Ecoforensic C.I.C., a community interest company that supports rights of nature advocacy through citizen-science initiatives, such as training community para-ecologists to collect data for use in rights of nature litigation. Dr Rogge collaborates with Ecoforensic C.I.C. in support of constitutional rights of nature litigation efforts by three communities in Ecuador's Andean and low-mountain Amazon regions. These cases are framed within the rights of nature provisions established in Ecuador's 2008 Constitution. 

In 2023, Dr Rogge produced and directed The Tribunal, a 28-minute documentary film about human rights and international investment law in partnership with the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment at Columbia University, New York. The Tribunal premiered at Columbia Law School in October 2023 with remarks by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, David R. Boyd. Filmed by in the megadiverse Ecuadorian cloud forest, The Tribunal brings to light the troubling human rights impacts on local nature defenders of the international investment arbitration system. Catherine Kessedijan, Professeur émérite de l’Université Panthéon-Assas, describes The Tribunal as "a tour de force, which shows all of the important points about investment law and human rights in only thirty minutes." Anil Yilmaz Vastardis and Tara Van Ho, Co-directors of the Essex Business and Human Rights Project write that: "The Tribunal is essential viewing for anyone working in the fields of international investment law and business and human rights, but most importantly for arbitrators and practitioners of investment law and arbitration."

From 2015 to 2019, Dr Rogge served as Teaching Fellow at Harvard University for graduate level courses in Global Governance (with John G. Ruggie), Business & Human Rights (with John G. Ruggie), and Corporate Responsibility (with Jane Nelson and John G. Ruggie). As a Clark Byse Fellow at Harvard Law School, Dr Rogge designed and led a research-based workshop series in 2018 on Business & Human Rights: Bridging the Gap. He is a member of the Global Business and Human Rights Scholars Association and the Business and Human Rights Teaching Network. For six years, Dr Rogge served as Academic Delegate at the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights for the Harvard Human Rights Program. From 2016-2019, Dr Rogge taught Business & Human Rights at the Jindal Global University & Harvard School of Public Health Summer School on Human Rights and Development in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Documentary Filmmaking

Dr Rogge's media arts practice is largely devoted to research-based documentary filmmaking. His international award-winning feature documentary film about a mining conflict in Ecuador, Under Rich Earth (2008), is regarded as a “classic example for companies on how not to handle community relations.” Under Rich Earth is held by over 50 University libraries worldwide and has been used in a wide range of law school and business school courses, including property law (University of Arizona), investment law (National University of Singapore), and Managing Responsibly (Toronto Metropolitan University). In 2016, Under Rich Earth was adopted as evidence and cited extensively by an international investment tribunal in the Copper Mesa Mining Corp. v Republic of Ecuador decision (P.C.A. 2012-2). Under Rich Earth was cited in National University of Singapore Professor Jean Ho’s treatise on “State Responsibility for Breaches of Investment Contracts” (2018 Cambridge University Press). His new research-based feature film, Flowers for the Idiot - Blumen für den Idioten, combines oral history with moving images of Berlin's contemporary landscape. It critically examines the collective memorialization of wartime atrocity. Based primarily on first person testimony that Dr Rogge collected over several years, the documentary is supported by extensive bibliographic and archival research about life in pre-war and WWII era Berlin. Rogge’s previous films have been supported by major awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council as well as the Toronto Arts Council and the National Film Board of Canada.

Professional Activities

Dr Rogge has acted as a consultant on pro-social corporate law reform, corporate purpose, and sustainability for the UNDP, Organization of American States, and the Secretaría General Iberoamericano (Ibero-American General Secretariat). Dr Rogge has worked for, advised, and collaborated with a wide range of legal-professional organizations and community organizations, including indigenous First Nations communities in Manitoba; the First Nations Chiefs of Ontario; a leading labour law firm in Toronto; a Geneva-based international dispute resolution law firm, a Toronto-based public interest litigation law firm; an agro-ecotourism worker-owned cooperative in Costa Rica (Coopeunioro R.L.); several indigenous organizations in Ecuador (Organización de Nacionalidades Huaoranis de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana, Organización Indígena Secoya del Ecuador, Organizacion de La Nacionalidad Indigena Siona del Ecuador); the Center for Economic and Social Rights - Centro de Derechos Económicos y Sociales (Quito); Acción Ecológica (Quito); Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental - Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (Lima); Harvard Human Rights Program; the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy; the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law & Policy; the Canadian Lawyers' Association for International Human Rights; the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT).

Biography:

Dr Rogge completed his Doctorate of Juridical Science (SJD) at Harvard Law School under the supervision of University Professor Amartya Sen, Professor Robert C. Clark (now Emeritus), Professor John Coates and Professor John G. Ruggie. Previously, he completed the joint J.D. and Master of Environmental Studies program at Osgoode Hall / York University in Toronto, concentrating on human rights and the environment, working closely with Professor Liisa L. North (now Emeritus). He holds a Graduate Diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) and a B.A. First Class Double Honours in Philosophy and English Literature from the University of Manitoba.

Research supervision:

Dr Rogge welcomes research proposals in diverse fields, including:

• Business & Human Rights Law
• International Economic Law
• Rights of Nature
• Corporate Law
• Corporate Governance
• Law and Economic Theory
• Law and Development
• Legal History of the Corporation
• Legal Theory and Methodology
• Human Rights and Documentary Cinema
• Law and Film
• Law and Philosophy