Shadow Courts

International trade deals have become vastly complex documents, seeking to govern everything from labor rights to environmental protections. This evolution has drawn alarm from American voters, but their suspicions are often vague. In this book, investigative journalist Haley Sweetland Edwards offers a detailed look at one little-known but powerful provision in most modern trade agreements that is designed to protect the financial interests of global corporations against the governments of sovereign states. She makes a devastating case that Investor-State Dispute Settlement -- a "shadow court" that allows corporations to sue a nation outside its own court system -- has tilted the balance of power on the global stage. A corporation can use ISDS to challenge a nation's policies and regulations, if it believes those laws are unfair or diminish its future profits. From the 1960s to 2000, corporations brought fewer than 40 disputes, but in the last fifteen years, they have brought nearly 650 -- 54 against Argentina alone.Edwards conducted extensive research and interviewed dozens of policymakers, activists, and government officials in Argentina, Canada, Bolivia, Ecuador, the European Union, and in the Obama administration. The result is a major story about a significant shift in the global balance of power.

"One of those wonderful, short books from Columbia Global Reports." - Felix Salmon, host of Slate Money "I read it in one night and felt like underlining every word of every page." - Cathy O'Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy "It's a short, vital introduction to [Investor-state dispute settlement] history and use, the shocking ways in which corporations have used it to bend governments to their will, and the total lack of justification for using such mechanisms in developed, stable countries." --The Week "SHADOW COURTS, a new book by Time magazine's Haley Edwards, shows how ISDS threats have strained support for free trade around the world." - Todd Tucker, Politico "Time investigative reporter Edwards charges that the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement tribunals at the heart of many current trade deals represent a major shift in global relations in favor of private corporate interest... Edwards does a great service for the public by turning the spotlight of disclosure on this dark corner of international relations." --Kirkus Reviews

Haley Sweetland Edwards is a correspondent at Time. Previously, she was an editor at the Washington Monthly, where she wrote about policy and regulation. From 2009 to 2012, she lived and worked in the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, where she wrote for The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and The New Republic, among other publications. She studied philosophy at Yale and journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Washington, D.C.