Andrew Larkin

my prior tweetstorm about it for anyone curious to learn more: bsky.app/profile/alar...

Now in print and available from HILJ: From Business Plans to International Rights, my job talk paper! Infinite thanks to the patient editors at HILJ and to so many others.

How did Chinese state-owned enterprises become some of the world's largest corporations? My latest paper (finally posted on SSRN!) tackles the question.

This plus the Dems declining to attack the massive budget increase to DHS (that they voted for) and tripping over themselves to take the scapegoats that the admin is offering (e.g. Noem) is quite the spectacle

Culture warriors cancel new U of A law dean before she started - Arkansas Times Culture warriors claim the scalp of Emily Suski, the would-be law school dean whose legal opinion on transgender athletes seems to have offended Arkansas officials.

FFS.

arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

And if someone gets Community Aid Network MN to join Bluesky, I'll do an extra special something then.

Why Community Aid Network MN? See below.

For Renee Nicole Good, for her wife, child, city, country, and every person she died to protect... it's fundraiser time.

I'm giving $1 to Community Aid Network MN for each repost this gets.
AND $1 for each new follower I get.
And if YOU donate to Community Aid Network MN, tell me and I'll match it.

full script for the Tarantino star trek

Hooray! Hmu for Minneapolis recs whenever, it's a great city!

So basically, the situation is that if someone wins the lottery and gets a habeas lawyer, they can probably win their freedom from illegal caging. But for the other 30,000 kidnapped each month (remember, there are only 282 who have won these cases so far that we know of), they're screwed.

19/19 The numbering got messed up. I have nothing to say here actually, except sorry that this was so long!

18/19 I’ve tried the journal editors’ patience so I can only make so many edits going forward, but will still be grateful for any thoughts or reactions whether I get to them in this piece, the next one, or just get the benefit of your thoughts in the comments or an email!

17/19 (Feel like tweetstorms have gone out of vogue but I've learned enough from them to have wanted to give one a shot)

16/19 E. Tendayi Achiume and Katrina Wyman were also both exceptionally generous with their time. Mistakes and misjudgments are of course my own.

15/19 So many people have been so generous with me in working on this. Extensive thanks go to @harlangcohen.bsky.social, @aratojulian.bsky.social, and @jbentonheath.bsky.social

14/19 For those reasons, I argue that we have to move away from a single-purpose investor-rights regime in regulating international investment. Terminate the investment treaties, I say!

13/19 And treaties’ faith in private FDI as an agent of development suggests that businesses, not states, are the actors that know how to achieve development – pushing adjudicators to favor business plans over national laws.

12/19 Other policy paradigms also contribute to these outcomes – sloppily applied, the “obsolescing bargain” trope leads investment lawyers to be suspicious of any domestic law measure that impedes profit, even if the investor assumed the risk.

11/19 Like other international law adjudicators, arbitrators are suspicious of domestic law. But the bigger the system becomes, and the less national law controls it, the more latitude businesses have as the only other stakeholder to set international norms.

10/19 There are reasons to think this is a structural feature of the investment regime – a regime whose only function is to protect investor rights.

9/19 It argues that those critiques stem in large part from the same problem – putting business plans above the law.

8/19 In pointing this out, my piece builds on the “public law” critique of IIL advanced by people like Gus Van Harten and @ccsi-columbia.bsky.social and the “private law” critique framed by @aratojulian.bsky.social and addressed in various forms by Gabriel Bottini, David Gaukrodger, and others.

7/19 When businesses can simply do an end-run around these processes through investment treaty arbitration, that subverts not just state interests but any public values other than capital accumulation.

6/19 While fairly subject to many criticisms, these processes, which often represent international best practices, create a foothold for local communities, Indigenous Peoples, and other affected stakeholders to have their views taken into account.

5/19 That creates problems in general, but those problems are particularly acute where, for instance, a business needs regulatory approval of an environmental and social impact assessment.

4/19 Looking at cases like Odyssey Marine v. Mexico, Rockhopper v. Italy, and Tethyan v. Pakistan, I show how investment treaties protect business plans to profit from permitted activities even when the investor never got the permit – and probably couldn’t have.

3/19 In particular, I look at statutory licensing, where states prohibit an activity and then grant exceptions in the form of licenses.

2/19 I show how investment treaties protect businesses’ bare hopes and dreams, even when those dreams involve doing things that host state law prohibits.

1/19 Now on SSRN: [From Business Plans to International Rights](papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....), forthcoming in the Harvard International Law Journal.

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