Nikhil Kalyanpur, "Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets" (Cornell UP, 2026)

In Legal Weapons of the Wealthy: The Offshoring of Elite Conflict in Emerging Markets

(Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Nikhil Kalyanpur examines a

striking feature of today's global legal order: the use of foreign

courts by elites to settle domestic disputes. On the surface, the

"outsourcing" of disputes by elites from countries with fragile

judiciaries looks like a search for fair treatment unavailable at home.

Yet extraterritorial dispute resolution varies across such countries.

Russian plutocrats, for instance, frequently litigate abroad, whereas

Chinese and South African ones rarely do.

Dr. Kalyanpur argues

that the pursuit of extraterritorial litigation depends on the balance

of power between a state and its plutocracy. In contexts of state