This report is about one of the most important yet little understood weapons that these corporations have constructed to defend themselves from challenge: a vast global web of international trade and investment agreements and a corporate-friendly tribunal system designed to enforce the rights that those agreements grant to corporations...The report...examines this conflict between sustainable development and international investment rules...Described by leading law academics as lacking fairness and balance, including basic requirements of openness and judicial independence, the investor-state dispute arbitration system effectively operates as a privatised justice system for global corporations...[D]ozens of…legal actions that have been taken by corporations against governments on issues ranging from mining to water to nuclear power…In these cases and many others the corporate rights established in international law through trade and investment agreements and enforced by international arbitration tribunals are compromising countries’ s sovereign right to regulate in the public good through a democratic process…[Refers to A.P. Moller-Maersk, Andarko, Cargill Chemtura, Entrx, Maersk (part of A.P. Moller-Maersk), Matalclad (part of Entrx), Occidental Petroleum, Philip Morris International, Vattenfall]