‘Pure Greed’: A Legal System That Gives Corporations Special Rights Has Come for Honduras

By Nicholas Kusnetz, Katie Surma

For the last couple of years, a growing number of political leaders, lawyers and activists have warned that an obscure arbitration system in international law is slowing climate action and undermining fragile democracies across the developing world. Investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, allows corporations to bring multi-billion dollar legal claims against governments that have rejected mining permits, enacted new taxes or taken other actions that can affect the value of their investments.