The book under review is a significant intervention in the intersecting fields of international law, business and human rights, and critical legal theory. It adopts the “Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)” framework to interrogate the prevalent practice of using strategic litigation to hold corporations accountable for complicity in international crimes, bridging the often-wide chasm between critical legal theory and courtroom advocacy. The book contains a rigorous legal analysis and a powerful critique of the structural limitations inherent in the current system, exposing the “civilizing” undertones of transnational corporate accountability litigation, where Northern courts “save” Southern victims from Southern (or Southern-hosted) corporate predators. This perspective fills a glaring gap in the existing literature, which celebrates such litigation as an unalloyed good without confronting its geopolitical and epistemological implications. Refusing to succumb to the legal nihilism around the TWAIL scholarship, the book acknowledges the structural biases of international criminal law (ICL) and argues for a realistic engagement with the law by introducing the “Third World Approaches to International Criminal Law (TWAI(C)L)” framework, calling for a shift from pure critique to strategic intervention.

The book provides insightful scholarship highlighting the boomerang of justice. The first part focuses on conceptualizing strategic litigation and fixing corporate accountability by shifting the lens from TWAIL to TWAI(C)L. The second part uses three case studies – the Ford Case, the CACI case, and the Lafarge case – to highlight the issues in the justice system. These cases demonstrate that while international tribunals lack jurisdiction over corporations, domestic courts can become sites of “subaltern counter-hegemony”. The third part concludes with a future blueprint for the strategic practice of ICL in corporate actions. The book posits “strategic litigation” as not merely a matter of winning cases but also a far-sighted political practice aimed at exposing and challenging the structures of imperialism and global capital.

Kalika Mehta, a postdoctoral scholar at Humboldt University in Berlin, uses her sharp academic and research pedigree to compile a well-researched, topical, and globally relevant book critically challenging the “blind spots” of mainstream ICL, specifically the diffusion of accountability for corporate crimes under the shield of corporate personality. Focusing on complicity, the sanitized legal narratives that separate business transactions from the violence they fund are uncovered. However, the book’s critical force also invites questions about the pathway forward. While Mehta’s diagnosis is incisive, the prescription beyond a call for greater deference to community-led definitions of justice and a shift towards political organizing remains somewhat nascent and, perhaps, is more of an honest reflection than a flaw.

The book is a powerful rejoinder to legal pessimism, a timely and essential academic contribution that propagates looking beyond the “courtroom win” to the longer, harder struggle for structural justice in the global economic order. It validates the efforts of human rights lawyers who navigate a hostile system, offering them a theoretical support for their daily battles. The book succeeds not by offering easy answers, but rather by questioning the narrative of global justice in the context of corporate accountability. The book is a formidable academic critique and an urgent ethical provocation, insisting that the fight against corporate impunity is also a fight against the colonial contours of international law itself.