ew reporting this week further exposes how Investor State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS—a legal system enshrined in thousands of global treaties, including the pending Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—empowers corporations and rich investors at the expense of citizens and democracy.
Under the ISDS framework, as Common Dreams has reported, multinationals are granted a parallel legal system through which they can sue governments, and therefore taxpayers, for loss of “expected future profit,” with the power to overrule national laws and judicial systems.
“Workers, environmentalists, and human rights advocates don’t get the right to use ISDS; only big corporations do,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has said. “That’s a rigged system.”
At the Huffington Post on Monday, journalist David Dayen outlined how “ISDS has increasingly become a way for rich investors to make money by speculating on lawsuits, winning huge awards, and forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.”