In Arbitrating Empire, Allison Powers takes the story of law and empire into fascinating new terrain. Arbitral tribunals, she shows, were important parts of U.S. colonial strategy: the purpose was to assuage opposition and consolidate power. However, their attempts to bolster American legitimacy did not always go as planned. By focusing on the actions of ordinary people, Powers shows how legal tools could be turned against their makers. This is the book I've been waiting for: a multinational social history of international law that transforms our understanding of the U.S. empire. * Ben Coates, Associate Professor, Wake Forest University * This remarkable book affirms why international lawyers need non-lawyers, particularly careful historians, to re-examine the 'truths' we tell ourselves. Allison Powers' deep dive into the archives of five claims commissions-starting with the 1868 US-Mexico Claims Commission and ending with one between those same states in 1923-undermines progress narratives that characterize the rise in 'neutral arbitration' as a victory for the rule of law and the politics of non-intervention. * José E. Alvarez, Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law, NYU School of Law * Powers demonstrates that in the shadow of the well-known Alabama Claims Arbitration of 1862-1872 and claims against Latin American governments by U.S. investors alleging denials of justice and unlawful takings, there existed a welter of claims directed against the U.S. by refugees from slavery, dispossessed Mexican women and Indigenous peoples, displaced residents of the Panama Canal Zone, sharecroppers, miners and many others who used the commissions to press their own denial of justice charges against the ostensible defender of the 'standard of civilization'. * José E. Alvarez, Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law, NYU School of Law * This book also traces how this alternative view of the right to life and property under international law got erased from the record, and why the U.S. shut these claims commissions down. This is an exceedingly useful corrective for those of us who think that the contribution these commissions made to the doctrines of diplomatic protection and state responsibility can be reduced to the differences between Carlos Calvo and Elihu Root. * José E. Alvarez, Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law, NYU School of Law *
