{"id":78864,"date":"2016-09-05T12:30:10","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T11:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=78864"},"modified":"2017-05-09T15:45:08","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T14:45:08","slug":"the-court-that-rules-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/the-court-that-rules-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Court That Rules the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"court<\/a><\/p>\n

Part one of a BuzzFeed News investigation \u2014 read the whole series here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment. <\/em><\/p>\n

28 Aug 2016 – <\/em>Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.<\/p>\n

Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.<\/p>\n

Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court\u2019s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as \u201cThe Club\u201d or \u201cThe Mafia.\u201d<\/p>\n

And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing \u2014 and its decisions so unpredictable \u2014 that some nations dare not risk a trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions, such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments of convicted criminals.<\/p>\n

This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.<\/p>\n

These trade pacts have become a flashpoint in the US presidential campaign. But an 18-month BuzzFeed News investigation, spanning three continents and involving more than 200 interviews and tens of thousands of documents, many of them previously confidential, has exposed an obscure but immensely consequential feature of these trade treaties, the secret operations of these tribunals, and the ways that business has co-opted them to bring sovereign nations to heel.<\/p>\n

The BuzzFeed News investigation explores four different aspects of ISDS. In coming days, it will show how the mere threat of an ISDS case can intimidate a nation into gutting its own laws, how some financial firms have transformed what was intended to be a system of justice into an engine of profit, and how America is surprisingly vulnerable to suits from foreign companies.<\/p>\n

The series starts today with perhaps the least known and most jarring revelation: Companies and executives accused or even convicted of crimes have escaped punishment by turning to this special forum. Based on exclusive reporting from the Middle East, Central America, and Asia, BuzzFeed News has found the following:<\/p>\n