Abstract
Make no mistake, David Schneiderman’s Investment Law’s Alibis: Colonialism, Imperialism, Debt and Development can be judged by its cover. A female bust draped in pearls and lace wears a gold crown. A coat of arms rests atop the crown. Superimposed on the royal bust is what appears to be an armored soldier. This image, which conjures the spoils of war, conquest, empire, gunboats, and the colonial chartered company, looks like it belongs to a forgotten era. Yet, as Schneiderman shows, this imagery remains very present in the field of international investment law. Investment Law’s Alibis interrogates four main defenses that have been used to justify the imperatives of international investment law: Colonialism, Imperialism, Debt, and Development. By juxtaposing past usages with contemporary usages of these alibis, he aims to show how international investment law continues to produce oppressive effects on citizens of the global South (5).
All five main chapters are built on analogies between the past and the present: between Memmi’s “portrait” of the colonizer in colonial Algeria and investment lawyers, arbitrators, and scholars; between Algerian international lawyer Mohammed Bedjaoui’s 1979 Towards a New International Economic Order and informal empire; between colonial-era notions of civilization and contemporary arguments for international investment law; between the 1980s debt crisis and the 2019 Tethyan Copper arbitral award of $6 billion US against Pakistan for expropriation of an undeveloped mining site;1 and between settler colonialism and the rights to property of Indigenous people. Here lies the most striking value of Investment Law’s Alibis: the monograph is about a regime of law built on over 3,300 international investment treaties (2), yet the author is able to weave together within one volume political theory and law, including insights from Michel Foucault, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, and Leonard Cohen
All five main chapters are built on analogies between the past and the present: between Memmi’s “portrait” of the colonizer in colonial Algeria and investment lawyers, arbitrators, and scholars; between Algerian international lawyer Mohammed Bedjaoui’s 1979 Towards a New International Economic Order and informal empire; between colonial-era notions of civilization and contemporary arguments for international investment law; between the 1980s debt crisis and the 2019 Tethyan Copper arbitral award of $6 billion US against Pakistan for expropriation of an undeveloped mining site;1 and between settler colonialism and the rights to property of Indigenous people. Here lies the most striking value of Investment Law’s Alibis: the monograph is about a regime of law built on over 3,300 international investment treaties (2), yet the author is able to weave together within one volume political theory and law, including insights from Michel Foucault, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, and Leonard Cohen
Original language | English |
---|---|
Journal | Journal of Law and Political Economy |
Publication status | Published - 2024 |