(January 21, 2007) There has been a revival in interest in the doctrine of odious debt in legal, policy and economic quarters. Building on the author’s earlier work and recently published article, this study provides a restatement of the odious debt doctrine and renewed examination of its legal foundations.

(January 17, 2007) This paper examines the way that the traditional notion of odious debt as a method of repudiating sovereign debt may undergo a conceptual revolution, as it changes focus from the illegitimacy of governments obtaining loans, to the illegitimacy of the systems through which such loans are made and enforced generally.

(January 17, 2007) Defenders of the odious debt doctrine, which bars creditors from collecting sovereign debts that financed the personal consumption of former dictators, argue that this rule would benefit populations following dictatorships and discourage would-be dictators from staging coups in the first place. We show that optimism about the doctrine is based on unrealistic assumptions about the motives and practices of dictators. With more realistic assumptions, the odious debt doctrine.

(January 17, 2007) Earlier this week, 140 international charities, churches and NGOs sent a written petition to British Prime Minister Tony Blair demanding that he reopen a corruption probe into a controversial arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

(January 17, 2007) The Kerala High Court in south-western India has directed the country’s top investigation agency to look into a corruption scandal concerning a years’ old government electricity contract awarded to a Canadian construction firm.

(January 1, 2007) Abstract: The War in Iraq has intensified the international human rights community’s attention to the staggering amount of debt facing any future Iraqi government.

(January 1, 2007) Once upon a time, sovereign debts were just that — debts or the entitlement to be repaid fully, including interest. During the 1970s it was thought unnecessary to make any distinctions between debts, based on the assumption that sovereigns might possibly become illiquid, but could never become insolvent.

(January 1, 2007) In a sense, all debts are odious; that is, to use dictionary definitions, “hateful; disgusting; offensive.”1 Yet insofar as international economic law today is concerned, only a certain few debts can be considered “odious debts” in order to contest and perhaps eventually to repudiate them.

(January 1, 2007) The odious debt doctrine has experienced renewed popularity in the past few years; it has been heralded by academics, political commentators, economists, and politicians as a mechanism to alleviate burdens imposed by illegitimate rulers.