Forthcoming Events

Forthcoming Events in our 2024-2025 Programme

Our meetings are held at Seven Arts 31A Harrogate Rd, Chapel Allerton, Leeds LS7 3PD.

If possible please arrive by 7.15pm for a 7.30pm start. There will be a £5 entrance fee to cover costs.

Our Scheduled Events in 2025:

Weds January 22nd 2025: Dr Sally Brooks, School for Business and Society, York University, The problem with (ISDS) Corporate Courts in International Trade Deals.

Summary

The Corporate Court (ISDS - Investor State Dispute Settlement) system was created 60 years ago to protect foreign investors in former colonies after independence. ISDS is a secretive international legal system that allows corporations to sue states for laws, regulations and domestic court rulings they think will reduce their profits. It was the outcome of discussions between oil companies and European banks who saw it as a “Magna Carta for investors”. With its endorsement by the World Bank, ISDS became a condition for developing countries to secure trade and investment agreements.

Corporate courts operate very differently to domestic courts. Only investors can sue states – states cannot sue investors. Cases are heard in designated arbitration centres, not courts, by a tribunal of three arbitrators, no judge. Rulings are often not published. Yet sums awarded are eye-watering – in 2006 Ecuador was ordered by an ISDS tribunal to pay $2.6 billion in compensation to Occidental Petroleum for terminating a contract even though the company had violated Ecuadorian law.

Today there are more than 3000 international trade and investment treaties that include ISDS clauses. Moreover, despite prior successes of citizen movements in pushing back at the normalisation of ISDS across all international trade, countries in the Global North are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong end of a system originally designed to limit the sovereignty of governments in the Global South.

After discussing the origins and spread of the ISDS system, this talk will turn to contemporary trends that point towards its further expansion and entrenchment: including its use by the fossil fuel industry as a mechanism to stall climate action; and its transformation into a highly profitable asset class for financial investors.

Biographical Details

Sally Brooks is an international development academic and former practitioner. She is an honorary fellow in the School for Business and Society and a member of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre at the University of York. She has previously worked with Save the Children Fund, CIDSE and VSO, among others. Her current research focuses on the marketisation and financialisation of global development, and the role and influence of elite foundations. She is an activist and trade campaigner with the Global Justice York group and National Secretary of Global Justice Now.

Weds February 12th 2025: Eric Kemp-Benedict, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, The Market Turn, the Failure to Meet the Climate Challenge, and What Comes Next.

Thursday (please note not Wednesday!) March 6th, Dr Phil Armstrong, Modern Monetary Theory and its applications

Weds April 9th 2025: Professor Greg Marsden, Institute of Transport Studies, University of Leeds, INFUZE project - looking at a car- less future in Leeds

Weds May 14th 2025: Professor Tim Cockerill, Director of Energy Leeds, University of Leeds, How do we decarbonise the UK?

Weds July 9th 2025: Tom Thayer, Consultant and hon. Lecturer in Oral Surgery at the Royal Liverpool University Dental School and Hospital, UK dentistry in the 21st century - back to the future?