Wildy Logo
(020) 7242 5778
enquiries@wildy.com

Book of the Month

Cover of McMeel on the Construction of Contracts: Interpretation, Implication and Rectification

McMeel on the Construction of Contracts: Interpretation, Implication and Rectification

Gerard McMeel
Price: £225.00

More Information

Land Registration Manual
4th ed




 Ash Jones


Welcome to Wildys

Watch


Judicial Cooperation in Commercial Litigation 3rd ed (The British Cross-Border Financial Centre World)



 Ian Kawaley, David Doyle, Shade Subair Williams


Offers for Newly Called Barristers & Students

Special Discounts for Newly Called & Students

Read More ...


Secondhand & Out of Print

Browse Secondhand Online

Read More...


2025-6 Christmas and New Year Closing

We are now closed for the Christmas and New Year period, returning on Monday 5th January 2026. Orders placed during this time will be processed upon our return on 5th January.

Hide this message

Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal

Ugo Mattei, Laura Nader

ISBN13: 9781405178945
Published: April 2008
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Country of Publication: USA
Format: Paperback
Price: £30.95



Despatched in 3 to 5 days.

Plunder examines the dark side of the Rule of Law and explores how it has been used as a powerful political weapon by Western countries in order to legitimize plunder – the practice of violent extraction by stronger political actors victimizing weaker ones.

  • Challenges traditionally held beliefs in the sanctity of the Rule of Law by exposing its dark side
  • Examines the Rule of Law's relationship with "plunder" in the service of Western cultural and economic domination
  • Draws on comparative and historical data to provide global examples of plunder
  • Brings the extensive legal advocacy and views of social justice of the authors to bear on the question: When is the Rule of Law illegal?

Subjects:
Public International Law
Contents:
Preface.
Introduction.
1. Plunder and The Rule of Law.
An Anatomy of Plunder.
Plunder, Hegemony, and Positional Superiority.
Law, Plunder, and European Expansionism.
Institutionalizing Plunder: The Colonial Relationship and the Imperial Project.
A Story of Continuity: Constructing the Empire of Law (lessness).
2. Neo-liberalism: Economic Engine of Plunder.
The Argentinean Bonanza.
Neo-Liberalism: An Economic Theory of Simplification and a Spectacular Project.
Structural Adjustment Programs and the Comprehensive Development Framework.
Development Frameworks, Plunder, and the Rule of Law.
3. Before Neo-Liberalism: a Story of Western Plunder.
The European Roots of Colonial Plunder.
The Fundamental Structure of US Law as a Post-Colonial Reception.
A Theory of Lack, Yesterday and Today.
Before Neo-Liberalism: Colonial Practices and Harmonious Strategies—Yesterday and Now.
4. Plunder of Ideas and the Providers of Legitimacy.
Hegemony and legal Consciousness.
Intellectual Property as Plunder of Ideas.
Providing Legitimacy: Law and Economics.
Providing Legitimacy: Lawyers and Anthropologists.
5. Constructing the Conditions for Plunder.
Plunder of Oil: Iraq and Elsewhere.
The New World Order of Plunder.
Not Only Iraq: Plunder, War, and Legal Ideologies of Intervention.
Institutional Lacks as Conditions for Plunder: Real or Created?.
Double Standards Policy and Plunder.
Poverty: Justification for Intervention and Consequence of Plunder.
6. International Imperial Law.
Reactive Institutions of Imperial Plunder.
U.S. Rule of Law: Forms of Global Domination.
The Globalization of the American Way.
An Ideological Institution of Global Governance: International Law.
Holocaust Litigation: Back to the Future.
The Swallowing of International Law by U.S. law.
Economic Power and the U.S. Courts as Imperial Agencies.
7. Hegemony and Plunder. The Demise of the Rule of Law in the United States.
Strategies to Subordinate the Rule of Law to Plunder.
Plunder in High Places: Enron and its Aftermath.
Plunder in Even Higher Places: Electoral Politics and Plunder.
Plunder of Liberty: The War on Terror.
Plunder Undisrupted: The Discourse of Patriotism.
8. Beyond an Illegal Rule of Law?.
Summing Up: Plunder and The Global Transformation of the Law.
Imperial Rule of Law or the People's Rule of Law.
The Future of Plunder.
Notes to Text.
Selected Further Reading.
Documentary Film Resources.
Index