Doreen Lustig
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198822097
- eISBN:
- 9780191861185
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198822097.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Private International Law
Chapter 6 is devoted to the Abadan Crisis and the circumstances surrounding the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the dispute between Britain and Iran over the ownership of oil ...
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Chapter 6 is devoted to the Abadan Crisis and the circumstances surrounding the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the dispute between Britain and Iran over the ownership of oil in Iran, known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company case. The Iranians’ argument for their sovereign right to oil was based on the corporate veil of the state as a justification for the expropriation of the company’s assets and the corporate veil of the company to sustain the separation between ownership (the British Government) and control (the company’s management). The Iranian position used an old toolbox to promote a vision of a new postcolonial world order based on equality and distributive justice. The chapter juxtaposes the Iranian position with Philip Jessup’s theory of transnational law and the hermeneutics of legal realism in the British position and chronicles how the Iranian strategy and success in the ICJ eventually ushered the shift toward a new international investment law regime.Less
Chapter 6 is devoted to the Abadan Crisis and the circumstances surrounding the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the dispute between Britain and Iran over the ownership of oil in Iran, known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company case. The Iranians’ argument for their sovereign right to oil was based on the corporate veil of the state as a justification for the expropriation of the company’s assets and the corporate veil of the company to sustain the separation between ownership (the British Government) and control (the company’s management). The Iranian position used an old toolbox to promote a vision of a new postcolonial world order based on equality and distributive justice. The chapter juxtaposes the Iranian position with Philip Jessup’s theory of transnational law and the hermeneutics of legal realism in the British position and chronicles how the Iranian strategy and success in the ICJ eventually ushered the shift toward a new international investment law regime.
Doreen Lustig
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198822097
- eISBN:
- 9780191861185
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198822097.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Private International Law
This book presents a historical study of the international law of the private business corporation. The literature on corporations and international law typically concentrates on the failure to ...
More
This book presents a historical study of the international law of the private business corporation. The literature on corporations and international law typically concentrates on the failure to regulate corporations. This book challenges this ‘failure’ narrative and presents an alternative historical reading: a history of its facilitative role in constituting an economic order. This study draws inspiration from scholarship on the history of international trade law, international investment law, the history of global governance, and political economic analysis of international law, and connects these specialized fields in a single lens: the corporate form. The point of departure for this history is the simultaneous emergence of international law as a modern legal discipline and the turn to free incorporation in corporate law during the last third of the nineteenth century. The book demonstrates how the sovereign veil of the state and the corporate veil of the company were applied in tandem to insulate corporations from responsibility. Nevertheless, less powerful states invoked the same prevailing conceptions of the corporation, the sovereign state, and the relation between them, to curtail corporate power in struggles associated with decolonization. Reacting to these early victories, capital exporting countries shifted to a vocabulary of human rights and protected companies under a new regime of international investment law, which entrenched the separation between market and politics.Less
This book presents a historical study of the international law of the private business corporation. The literature on corporations and international law typically concentrates on the failure to regulate corporations. This book challenges this ‘failure’ narrative and presents an alternative historical reading: a history of its facilitative role in constituting an economic order. This study draws inspiration from scholarship on the history of international trade law, international investment law, the history of global governance, and political economic analysis of international law, and connects these specialized fields in a single lens: the corporate form. The point of departure for this history is the simultaneous emergence of international law as a modern legal discipline and the turn to free incorporation in corporate law during the last third of the nineteenth century. The book demonstrates how the sovereign veil of the state and the corporate veil of the company were applied in tandem to insulate corporations from responsibility. Nevertheless, less powerful states invoked the same prevailing conceptions of the corporation, the sovereign state, and the relation between them, to curtail corporate power in struggles associated with decolonization. Reacting to these early victories, capital exporting countries shifted to a vocabulary of human rights and protected companies under a new regime of international investment law, which entrenched the separation between market and politics.