The Court Thats Rules The World
(文章来源：https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrishamby/super-court?utm_term=.pj4YwxPpbM#.bvq9vJb1lY，此文章仅作翻译学习之用）
Imagine a private, global supercourt that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.
想象一个私人的、全球化的超级法庭给予公司权力，让他们对国家们予取予求。
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.
假设一个国家试图起诉一名腐败的CEO或者是对危险品污染罚款。想象一下一个公司可以到这个超级法庭寻求帮助，起诉整个国家胆敢敢于他们的利润，并且要求几百万甚至上亿美金的补偿。
Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court’s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as “The Club” or “The Mafia.”
想象一下，这个法庭能量如此之巨大，使得各国家必须关注它的规则好像这规则是自己国家的最高法庭制定的一样，但却没有明确的上诉方式。没有判决先例的运行方式，也没有任何有效的公众监督，这个法庭经常将诉讼甚至于决定保持机密。对这些案子进行审判的大部分是西方公司的精英律师们，他们对于扩张这个法庭的权威性有既定的利益，因为他们会从中直接受益，今天为某个案件进行辩护，明天就坐在审判其他案件的位子上。某些人半开玩笑的称他们自己为俱乐部或黑手党。
And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing — and its decisions so unpredictable — that some nations dare not risk a trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions, such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments of convicted criminals.
并且想象一下这个法庭强制加诸的处罚是如此具有打击性--它的决定是如此的不可预测，以至于一些国家根本不敢冒被审判的风险，对于这仅仅是法律诉讼的威胁，用提供大量的特许来回应，例如中止他们的诉讼，或者甚至对于罪犯的处罚一笔勾销。
This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.
这个系统已经存在了，在世界各地的各个办公楼以及会议室秘密的进行。被称为投资者-国家争端解决，或ISDS，被写进多种制约国际贸易和投资的协定中，包括NAFTA以及国会必须尽快决定是否予以签署的跨太平洋伙伴关系协定。
These trade pacts have become a flashpoint in the US presidential campaign. But an 18-month BuzzFeed News investigation, spanning three continents and involving more than 200 interviews and tens of thousands of documents, many of them previously confidential, has exposed an obscure but immensely consequential feature of these trade treaties, the secret operations of these tribunals, and the ways that business has co-opted them to bring sovereign nations to heel.
这些贸易条约已经成为了美国大选的爆发点。但是BuzzFeed的一项长达18个月的调查，这项调查包含三个大洲，200名访问者，数万份文件资料，其中很多之前是保密的文件，调查揭示出这些条约之间一个模糊的但是却又极大相关性的特点，这些协定之间的秘密运作以及各种方式让商业导致或致使主权国家的倾斜。
The BuzzFeed News investigation explores four different aspects of ISDS. In coming days, it will show how the mere threat of an ISDS case can intimidate a nation into gutting its own laws, how some financial firms have transformed what was intended to be a system of justice into an engine of profit, and how America is surprisingly vulnerable to suits from foreign companies.
BuzzFeed的新闻调查探寻了ISDS的四个不同方面。未来的几天里，它会向人们展示，一个ISDS的威胁是如何敢于一个国际，使得其对自身法律的修改，一些财团是如何将一个本来是公正的法律系统变成一个利润机器，美国如何面临着大公司们的诉讼的威胁。
