Unexpected duet? Constitutions and investment treaties as the backbone of Latin American extractivist legality

Calls to defend sovereignty from international investment treaties are common in Latin America. Many protest that states are often put in the difficult position of choosing between their constitution and foreign investment, reducing the space for genuine democratic emancipation. This article proposes that we, Latin Americans, have been misguided by this representation. Extractivism, perhaps the major barrier to Latin American emancipation, thrives because of constitutions and international investment treaties. These two legal orders create a legal imagination and enact the legal rules necessary for nature’s exploitation. In this article, we map how constitutions and investment treaties consolidate and reproduce extractivism, recognising that constitutions provide some means for a paradigm shift, for instance through environmental activism or constitutional reforms. However, global and domestic extractivist elites can always rely on investment law to counter unwanted environmental measures or resist transformative moments, locking in the present extractivist mode of accumulation.