Wages an assault on the belief in the sanctity of the Rule of Law. This book exposes its relationship with plunder in the service of Western cultural and economic domination. It asks the question - is the Rule of Law itself illegal? It is intended for those interested in law, politics, and social justice. It includes global examples of plunder.

The Rule of Law has long been cherished in the US as the ultimate defender of civil liberty and the American way of life - a Rule of Law which no one can quite define, but everyone supports. In this provocative new book, Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader wage a frontal assault on this treasured belief in the sanctity of the Rule of Law, unflinchingly exploring its previously neglected dark side. They expose its intimate relationship with plunder - the practice of violent extraction by stronger political actors victimizing weaker ones - in the service of Western cultural and economic domination. Boldly conceived and vibrantly written, Plunder dares to ask the paradoxical question - is the Rule of Law itself illegal? Mattei and Nader expose global examples of plunder: of Native American lands, to the plunder of oil in Iraq; of ideas in the form of Western patents and intellectual property rights imposed on weaker peoples; and, of liberty and the demise of Rule of Law in the United States. This thought-provoking text is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary law, politics, and social justice.

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