From Colonial Law to Corporate Lawfare: The Neocolonial Logics of Resource Extraction
Keywords:
corporate lawfare, colonial legal systems, neocolonialism, resource extraction, legal resistance, environmental justice, investor-state arbitration, indigenous rightsAbstract
This review critically examines how colonial legal systems have evolved into contemporary mechanisms of corporate lawfare that enable neocolonial forms of resource extraction. The study employs a narrative review methodology using descriptive analysis to synthesize recent interdisciplinary literature from 2020 to 2024. The research draws from legal, postcolonial, and political economy perspectives and focuses on secondary sources, case studies, and legal documents that explore the historical and contemporary legal architectures of resource extraction. Findings show a clear continuity between colonial legal instruments—such as terra nullius, concession laws, and sovereignty-denying codes—and modern corporate legal strategies including investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), arbitration, regulatory capture, and tax avoidance. Case studies of Chevron in Ecuador, Vedanta in Zambia, and Shell in Nigeria illustrate how multinational corporations use lawfare to consolidate control, suppress opposition, and neutralize local legal systems. Regional comparisons reveal common patterns of legal dispossession across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, alongside the emergence of powerful resistance movements rooted in indigenous legal traditions, environmental justice, and legal pluralism. Contemporary corporate lawfare represents a reconfiguration of colonial legal logics within a globalized legal framework. To achieve equitable and sustainable resource governance, legal systems must be fundamentally transformed to center justice, community sovereignty, and ecological integrity.
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