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The article draws on scholarships in the areas of international law, inequality and energy justice to engage in a dialogue with the business and human rights literature, from the perspective of the global south and Latin America, in particular. It engages with Gwynne Skinner's monograph about overcoming barriers to judicial remedy for corporate abuses of human rights. Skinner argues that if victims of these abuses cannot secure remedy in the countries in which the abuses occur – because of weak or corrupt institutions, among other factors – then the victims have a right to remedy in the home countries of the corporations and in countries in which they may conduct business – specifically, the United States, Canada and Europe. Skinner recommends that new legislation be introduced in these countries to ensure that their courts have jurisdiction to hear cases, under international human rights law, even when the cases have little or no links with the forum countries. I argue that a more robust international law and interdisciplinary approach shows that international human rights law alone provides a weak basis for the recommendations. I also reflect on part of the narrative that supports Skinner's argument, which builds a negative image of the courts in developing countries, to argue that this is unnecessary and that expansions of the bases of jurisdiction should be implemented on specific and stronger reasons.

The concept of energy democracy has seen a moderate rise in scholarship over the last decade. This article is the first to examine the concept of energy democracy from a critical perspective, and it is advanced here that the concept is limited and narrow. Further, through analysing it through the JUST Framework it is clear that energy democracy fails to deliver real justice. The JUST Framework takes us through core justice issues, such as distributive, procedural, restorative, recognition and cosmopolitanism. Further, it explores the space and time dimensions which bring a more practical perspective on the concept. Energy democracy scholars in the recent past (in 2019 and 2020) have sought to broaden the concept. However, as this article shows, these debates exist in the literature already, and energy justice and just transition issues go much further and are already more developed and utilised by researchers. In addition, the energy democracy concept is limited in the main part to local communities and ignores key issues such as energy extraction activities and indigenous communities. To conclude, and to achieve action, we call on energy democracy scholars to engage in the just energy transition literature and to contribute to the decrease of the language war that is progressively affecting the field of energy studies addressing the challenges of an accelerated transition to a lower-carbon economy.