Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), central to international arbitration and a practice favored by litigation funders, has become a target of widespread disinformation campaigns.

The arbitration clauses in bilateral investment treaties that allow ISDS have begun to take heat, not just from populists and anti-corporates, but also from well-meaning pro-investment and pro-trade news outlets.  Consider this headline from The Economist this past October: "How Some International Treaties Threaten the Environment," or this statement from the magazine a few years ago, centered more specifically on ISDS, which they claim "allows multinational companies to get rich at the expense ordinary people, [giving] foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe."