Alumnus Update: Sudhanshu Roy
This week Sudhanshu Roy shares his thoughts on how Inlaks Scholarship helped him on his career path of defending sovereign states against unjust and exploitative lawsuits filed by foreign corporations.
Sudhanshu is a 2015 scholar who pursued an LLM in Law at the New York University, School of Law.
More than eleven years ago, in the final semester of my undergraduate law program, I encountered a peculiar international legal order which granted rights to multinational corporations the power to sue governments for a wide range of regulatory and policy actions before a privately constituted panel of three judges (called “arbitrators” in the legal world). This legal order existed independent of the traditional system of domestic courts. International organizations such as the United Nations exercised no control over it. This unique system of dispensing private justice was unlike anything I had encountered before. And yet, it seemed problematic on so many levels.
Private investors and corporations had used this system to bring a lawsuit against tiny Bolivia after the Government there had reversed an ill-fated effort to privatise the water system in Bolivia’s third largest city, Cochabamba. The lawsuit had such an influence that the episode came to be known in Bolivia as the La Guerra del Agua (read more), or “The Water Wars.” The same system had allowed the international tobacco giant Philip Morris to sue Uruguay (read more) after it adopted anti-tobacco regulations with a view to implementing the World Health Organization’s tobacco control policies, aimed at tackling the health dangers posed by tobacco. In India, it permitted an Australian mining company to sue the Government for a delay in hearing an enforcement petition filed before the Delhi High Court, the kind of which ordinary litigants face everyday (read more).
NYU, School of Law, Class of 2016
I was intrigued. How could nation states contract out of their sovereign right to have their actions challenged before constitutionally created domestic courts? What motivated States to grant sweeping powers to foreign investors through backdoor, including the peculiar privilege to directly file lawsuits at international arbitration tribunals? And, most importantly, what could be done to prevent private corporations from exploiting the system by filing lawsuits against common sense regulation such as plain packaging of tobacco products?
In 2009, I stepped out of law school in search for answers to these questions. The global financial crisis was at its peak. It was a time of great upheaval. People were angry at the state of the world and rejected the deep inequalities that the existing global economic order had fostered.
States were searching for answers too. They were particularly concerned about the negative impact of international agreements which allowed foreign investors to bring a case directly against the country hosting their investment. In Europe, there were mass street protests against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement, a mega-trade deal which critics argued weakened health, environmental and social safety regulations enacted by Governments. A banner outside the US embassy in Berlin summed up the public mood: “Demokratie ist keine Handelsware,” which means democracy is not for trading (read more).
I was ready to confront these challenging issues and put my abilities of being a lawyer to test. However, I soon discovered that there was a vast difference in being a wide-eyed student of international law and its practitioner. International law was then, and still remains, a Western, old, white and male phenomenon. The lack of diverse and regional representation in international law practice and academia is a well-known problem, despite many efforts to reduce these disparities.
It was against this uncertain backdrop that I decided to apply for the Master’s programme in International Legal Studies at the New York University School of Law in the summer of 2015. A few months later, I found out that I had been accepted to NYU Law. However, neither me, nor my family could afford to pay the full tuition and cover my expenses in a city as expensive as New York.
While searching for funding opportunities, my wife encouraged me to apply for Inlaks Scholarship. To be completely honest, I did not have high hopes when I initially applied. I knew that so many of India’s best and brightest law students would be vying for the same scholarship. However, as I look back, I believe a few things worked out in my favor.
First, after law school, I had spent a few years working for the Government of India on the reform and renegotiation of India’s Bilateral Investment Treaty program. I got this opportunity by pure chance after responding to a notice advertised by the Ministry of Finance. The position was temporary, without the benefits of regular employment. However, having the experience of Government service on my application gave me an advantage which most candidates probably did not. Second, ever since I was a student, I was very clear in what would be my calling: help defend states against international law claims filed by private corporations. I believe this clarity of objective helped me greatly during the rigorous interview process.
I could not believe it when I was finally awarded the scholarship. With the financial and institutional support from Inlaks, I was able to concentrate fully on my Master’s program at NYU, without putting a financial burden on my family. I spent an unforgettable year in New York. It gave me the opportunity to meet incredible people from different backgrounds and cultures. More importantly, I was able to establish the personal and professional connections that helped me land my dream job, the same I had aspired to pursue since I was a student: defending sovereign States––particularly developing and least developing states––against unjust and exploitative lawsuits filed by foreign corporations.
London Hearing, Jan 2018
None of this would have been possible without the generosity of the Inlaks Scholarship. I have helped defend international lawsuits filed against a diverse group of countries such as India, Mauritius, Bangladesh, Nepal, Croatia, Ecuador and Ukraine. I have argued and presented cases before international courts and tribunals in Singapore, London, Paris, Washington D.C., and during the times of Coronavirus, via Zoom.
The highlight of my practice has thus far has been helping India achieve its first ever victory in an international investment claim brought by the French multinational shipping company, Louis Dreyfus Armatures (LDA). The lawsuit was rejected on grounds of LDA’s ineligibility to pursue the claim as an investor under the India-France Bilateral Investment Treaty (read more).
Another significant highlight has been representing the Republic of Mauritius to victory in a lawsuit brought by United Kingdom investors, who had sued Mauritius over the building a luxury resort at the Le Morne Cultural Landscape, a mountain and UNESCO World Heritage site jutting into the Indian Ocean in southwest Mauritius. The mountain was a place of refuge in the 18th and 19th centuries for escaped slaves from Africa, Madagascar, India and Southeast Asia. Le Morne in particular this is a place of great reverence because their ancestors fled slavery, held out, fought for freedom and defended their own freedom for years against enormous odds in these craggy mountain peaks. We fought and won defending Mauritius right to restrain private development in the interest of historic and cultural preservation (read more).
Le Morne, Mauritius
During the course of my representation of Mauritius, I had the chance to visit and discover the country beyond its clichéd representation of glamorous resorts and beaches. I was able to experience and reflect on the deep historical connections between India and Mauritius, especially through the presence of the descendants of almost half a million indentured labourers who were forcibly moved to work on sugarcane plantations on the island by the colonial British regime. The historical vestiges of Mauritius Island provide an important recollection of what is one of the earliest examples of the roots of the unjust global economic system perpetuated by a handful of countries on others. It also serves as a useful reminder of all which still remains to be achieved.
One day I hope to be able to give back to future students and to the community the platform Inlaks has provided me. Thanks to Inlaks, it has been a good beginning, but the battle is barely half won.
Cover Photo: Sudhanshu as a graduate student at the New York University School of Law
