This study critically examines rulings of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) tribunals. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) Chapter 11, ISDS provides foreign investors with the tools to launch a claim against signatory countries should they feel their investment was inhibited by local regulations. Empirically this study draws upon Windstream Energy LLC. v. the Government of Canada as a case study to analyze the competing responses exchanged during the tribunal’s hearings. The claim by Windstream Energy LLC against the Government of Ontario (GoO) serves as both a central and relevant example for examining the ramifications of ISDS, as it is one of Canada’s most recent defeats featuring the largest award outside a pre-tribunal ISDS settlement. Information was drawn from tribunal documents, referred to as a Memorial and Counter Memorial, which outline each party’s argument and supporting claims. Additionally, the tribunal publishes their final decision and justifications. A critical discourse analysis method, theoretically informed by the corporate crime literature and Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, helps in critically examining the economic, political, and cultural assumptions that influenced the tribunal’s decision and the state’s approach to foreign investment. Overall, dominant voices reinforced neoliberal beliefs about transnational market expectations and the role of the state under a globalized capitalist system. Justifications rooted in market logics prioritized the accumulation of foreign capital over the potential dangers of Windstream’s project. Ultimately, it is the inclusion of corporate safeguards, like ISDS, in free trade pacts that help to (re)produce neoliberal capitalist ideals and further reinforce status-quo economic relations.

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded after a series of issues with the Macondo oil well, around the Louisiana coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the death of 11 workers and wounding 17 others. On April 22, the rig sank into the ocean. Large quantities of oil have then poured into the Gulf waters for almost 3 months, causing the most serious oil spill in history. The event is critically examined in relation to the State-corporate crime integrated theoretical model by Michalowski and Kramer (2006), in particular using the institutional level (the relationship between politics and economics) and the operationality of control catalyst (the presence or absence of social control). The results are presented with a deductive strategy. Furthermore, part of the long-term consequences on the environment will be presented, using a deductive thematic strategy. I believe, in order to comprehend the importance of this study field and the relevance of my work, it is necessary to fully analyze the long-term consequences of the DWH (Deepwater Horizon) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The analysis is developed within a case study, based on a literature review. Results show that not only the long-term consequences of the oil spill on the environment are devastating on almost all the elements studied, but that the role of the State in the accident was decisive, especially for the work culture which developed during the years, that led to the accident.

During the last decades, climate change studies have been focusing more intensely on its anthopocenic essence, as the consequence of production and consumption patterns that require the intensive exploitation of the environment. In line with this school of thought, and new generations of studies on environmental crime, this work aims to present the environmentally and climate-related issues arising from land degradation in the Peruvian Amazon; focusing on those casual mechanisms developed from the collusion between Peruvian-economic policies and new private actors such as transnational corporations (TNCs). Relying on the assumption that: the processes moving the issue of climate change overcome the global space, and can be observed from regional, national or local point of view; this work's purpose is to analyze how a single country as Peru, currently considered of low ecological footprint, could, by means of the definition of national laws (environmentally and economic-related) burden climate change. The analysis focuses on a single case-study identified with the territory within the Northern Ucayali and Southern Loreto regions in Peru, and builds on the theory of state-corporate crime developed in the 1990s by Ronald C. Kramer and Raymond J. Michalowski to define the role of state-corporate relationships in the production of social harms. To show how this relationship is today shaping the globally spread issue of climate change, the analysis of the palm oil industry in Ucayali is presented as main example of a broader phenomenon of transgression and partnership between private and public spheres in Peru. In this optic, the purpose is to give further contributions to the studies of climate change as state-corporate crime, focusing on the analysis of those territory, as the Amazon, whose preservation has been identified as mayor tool against global warming and which is instead harmed by the relation between private and governments interests.

This study addresses the need for a parsimonious theoretical model to explain state-corporate crime. The Integrated Theoretical Model of State-Corporate Crime will be compared to the Integrated Theory of International Criminal Law Violation to determine which model provides the most accurate theoretical depiction of state- corporate crime, while retaining parsimony. For this comparison, the models will be applied to Democratic Republic of Congo case study. Using a secondary analysis of qualitative data and preexisting literature, it was found that the Integrated Theoretical Model of State-Corporate Crime displays a representative depiction of all state-corporate crime actors and their catalysts for action in a more parsimonious manner than the Integrated Theory of International Criminal Law Violation.

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