15 August 2024. Beehive Seminar: Corporate War Profiteering and International Law: A Study in the Politics of Representations with Shahd Hammouri
15 August 2024. 2 - 3 pm
Room 1002
Melbourne Law School
Image source: Jill Wellington from Pixabay
Beehive Seminar - Corporate War Profiteering and International Law: A Study in the Politics of Representations
This presentation introduces a forthcoming book which throws a spotlight on the actors and the harm not represented in international law’s imagination of the context of war. The book studies the theoretical infrastructure which allows legal practitioners to discuss the invasion of Iraq without thinking of Exxon Mobil, to discuss the dictatorship in Chile without thinking of ITT, and to discuss the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo without thinking of Glencore.
The book confronts international law with the realities of private power and the war economy. It argues that international legal language facilitates a distorted perception of corporate involvement in war. To do so, it asks how does international law imagine the corporation and its economic activity in the context of war? In this process, the book provides a critique of international law’s treatment of corporate legal personality and responsibility. To extend international law’s imagination, it discursively invokes sidelined narratives on private power and the war economy told by the global south.