Investment Law’s Alibis: Colonialism, Imperialism, Debt and Development, written by David Schneiderman

What is it about?

Book review of David Schneiderman, Investment Law's Alibis (CUP 2022): "At its best, investment law provides a pacific means of dispute settlement that serves both to discipline the arbitrary exercise of sovereign authority and to condition the international protection of foreign investment on a State’s pursuit of its customary and treaty obligations in respect of human rights, public health, and environmental protection. At its worst, investment law may well underwrite the legacies of colonialism and imperialism by reproducing relations of sovereign debt and uneven development. Certainly, Alibis makes a concise case for the latter narrative. But we should be careful not to accord causal primacy to arbitral practice, which is modestly tasked with the ad hoc resolution of legal disputes arising from a basic contradiction in the structure of world economy: on one hand, the global allocation of resources via cross-border capital and commodity flows and, on the other, the presumptive jurisdiction of States over assets and activities in their territories."

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