Synopsis: The International Human Rights Committee (IHRC) of the State Bar of Texas represents a groundbreaking initiative in connecting business law with human rights advocacy. Founded in August 2015 by the late Thomas H. Wilson, a visionary employment attorney at Vinson & Elkins, the IHRC emerged from a recognition that lawyers needed better education and guidance on international human rights issues affecting their clients’ global operations.
Creation of the IHRC
The International Human Rights Committee (IHRC) of the International Law Section (ILS) came into existence in August 2015 when the Board of the State Bar of Texas (SBOT) gave its approval of the ILS’s request to create a committee focused on international human rights issues for the Section’s membership. On June 23, 2015, Thomas H. (Tom) Wilson circulated an email message to the Council members of the ILS that set out his proposal to create the IHRC. As a consequence, Tom is credited as being the founder of the IHRC due to his guidance in getting the proposal approved by the SBOT. Tom was a partner in the Employment, Labor & OSHA Section of Vinson & Elkins in Houston, and was certified by the Texas Board of Specialization in Labor and Employment Law. Upon meeting him, it was clear that Tom was a natural leader who was intelligent, kind, caring, good humored and principled. His innate ability to inspire people with his calm demeanor and logical approach made him the perfect candidate to become the first Chair of the IHRC.
Tom’s experience representing clients who had international operations that required detailed and precise advice on labor and employment problems, contractual issues, and contractor and subcontractor matters made him a veritable visionary in terms of the path that the IHRC should take. His exposure to such international labor problems gave him invaluable insights into the complications that arise as a result of his clients’ reliance on overseas supply chains, as well as their involvement in international transactions and operations. This familiarity of the issues served Tom well, providing him with the vision to establish goals and the ideas to generate projects for the IHRC that would further the purpose of the committee and produce solutions to problems.
The Guiding Principles
Tom’s insights, coupled with his belief in the respect and dignity of human beings, provided him with the aptitude required to address potential international human rights violations in the course of rendering his advice, and the need to enhance due diligence activities with respect to the activities of contractors and subcontractors. In the early years of his practice, he had to take a pragmatic approach to providing advice that included human rights concerns, but in June 2011 when the Human Rights Council of the United Nations unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles), things changed drastically. The V&E website quotes Tom as saying: “It was a watershed moment because now we had a name for what we were talking about for all those years. And we had some Guiding Principles to live by, and some things we could actually talk around that actually gave us focus.” That focus included the recognition that there was an overriding need to educate his fellow lawyers about international human rights.
The Guiding Principles stipulate that business enterprises have the responsibility to respect internationally recognized human rights and that this responsibility is “a global standard of expected conduct for all business enterprises wherever they operate.” The internationally recognized human rights that businesses should respect include those set forth in what is called the International Bill of Human Rights (IBHR), which is comprised of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, and two major international treaties that codify those rights and were approved by the UN General Assembly in 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Principle 12 of the Guiding Principles refers to those documents, as well as the principles concerning fundamental rights set out in the International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
In 2012, Tom joined the IBA’s Human Rights Committee (HRC), and, at the request of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute (HRI), he and John Vernon outlined their ideas for the implementation of the Guiding Principles by global bar associations and businesses. Later, Tom became an officer of the HRC and the editor of the IBA’s HRC newsletter. In addition, Tom and John were tasked by the IBA’s HRI leadership to begin adding speaker panels to their programs to discuss how and why the Guiding Principles were important. Tom and John made sure that each IBA conference thereafter would have one or more sessions discussing the implementation of the Guiding Principles. In 2015, Tom and John and the other members of the HRC met with John Ruggie, the man who led the effort to promulgate the Guiding Principles, and others at the IBA Vienna program to discuss the status of implementation. John recalls that, after that session with John Ruggie, Tom told him he was going to attempt to make the State Bar of Texas the first U.S. bar association to change the ethics rules to adopt the Guiding Principles. John joined Tom in that effort, which led to John’s active involvement with the IHRC.
Trajectory of the IHRC
I met Tom Wilson in 2014 at a meeting of the ILS Council members, and for the following eight years was fortunate to witness his many remarkable accomplishments in the advancement of the understanding of the critical connection between business and international human rights, as well as educating and mentoring lawyers about human rights. I was in private practice then, but had spent the bulk of my career as an in-house counsel for an energy company prior to the introduction of the Guiding Principles. I specialized in international transactions in emerging markets and dealt with many situations in which contractors were involved in the construction of facilities and the supply of parts and machinery. Although I was concerned about the violation of human rights in those types of operations and supply chain issues, the clients/businessmen I worked with weren’t interested in including the topic in due diligence activities. Although this was frustrating, I made a point of including human rights issues in my own due diligence review process.
I joined the IHRC as soon as it was formed and worked with Tom and John on a number of projects in connection with the role of the IHRC and international human rights issues. The first meeting of the members of the IHRC took place on September 17, 2015, at which time Tom set out a list of 10 “To Do” items for the committee to pursue, many of which became active projects. The second meeting of the IHRC was held on October 21, 2015, and resulted in the establishment of five working groups: review of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct; formulating and providing law firm guidance on human rights; establishing a speakers bureau; creating an online library of human rights documents; and forming a writers club. Of the five, the speakers bureau and the writers club activities were carried out on more of an informal, albeit active, basis than the other three. A Law Student Outreach program was also initiated in 2016 for which IHRC members would make presentations to students at Texas law schools.
The first example of a writers club project occurred in January, 2016, when Tom obtained the agreement of the SBOT’s Texas Lawyer magazine for the placement of an article about international human rights in the March edition of the magazine. Tom enlisted John Vernon and I to assist him with the preparation of the article, and so began the effort to inform Texas lawyers regarding human rights issues and the IHRC. Several other articles have been written by IHRC members for the IBA/HRC and ILS/IHRC international newsletters as well as legal periodicals.
Tom also established an IHRC-sponsored International Human Rights Writing Award competition in 2017 for Texas law school students as a means of educating future lawyers on the topic. Several members of the IHRC have volunteered their time over the past seven years to review and judge the papers that have been submitted by law students. When he was elected as Chair of the ILS in June 2018, Tom launched an International Newsletter as an online publication and announced that the winning papers from the International Human Rights Writing Award competition would be published therein (the award was renamed the Thomas H. Wilson Human Rights Scholarship Award in 2023). Due to firsthand knowledge of Tom’s dedication to human rights issues, I jumped at the chance to be the first editor in chief of the International Newsletter when Tom asked if I was interested. During the six years of its existence, many articles on international human rights topics were included in the International Newsletter, which was replaced this year by the ILS’s Global Law Review.
Under Tom’s direction, the IHRC created a website that contains the text of many basic human rights documents (https://ilstexas.org/human-rights-committee/), and conducted research on possible revisions to the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct with respect to international human rights obligations. Tom arranged for the University of Texas School of Law’s Human Rights Clinic to review the Texas Disciplinary Rules, compare them with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and make recommendations for possible revisions to the Disciplinary Rules. The Human Rights Clinic did make such recommendations for specific, beneficial revisions to the Disciplinary Rules, which have been widely circulated for discussion purposes.
During his tenure as Chair of the IHRC and thereafter, Tom traveled all over the U.S. and to many foreign countries, from Australia to Abu Dhabi, making presentations about the IHRC and the hard and soft law implications for practitioners related to international human rights issues. Similar presentations were also made to bar associations and law schools in the U.S. by members of the IHRC, covering the goals and activities of the IHRC, and the importance of the UN Guiding Principles. The Guiding Principles are at the heart of the IHRC’s efforts, and, as a result of Tom’s leadership, the IHRC took the lead among U.S. bar associations in providing information about international human rights issues that are related to doing business in international markets. Tom reminded us from time to time that due diligence investigations must be carried out with a focus on international human rights violations because, as he said, “we had the Guiding Principles to live by!”
I admired and respected Tom so much that I nominated him for the 2019 IBA Award for Outstanding Contribution by a Legal Practitioner to Human Rights. By then, Tom had already made a tremendous contribution to the practice of human rights law, and demonstrated a remarkable level of determination and courage by advocating for and obtaining the approval to initiate human rights activities within the structure of the State Bar of Texas. As a result of Tom’s leadership, the IHRC has taken the lead among U.S. bar associations in providing information and education about international human rights issues that are related to doing business in international markets.
When the tenth anniversary of the creation of the IHRC occurs in August 2025, the members of the ILS and IHRC will be proud to say that much has been achieved and much more remains to be done in order to accomplish the committee’s goals. Joshua Newcomer, the outgoing Chair of the IHRC, has kept the IHRC moving forward and the members have continued their involvement since the devastating loss of Tom Wilson in October 2022. Therefore, the IHRC will continue to succeed, and is in position to become more widely recognized as a relevant participant in the movement toward a more complete convergence of international human rights and business.
