This chapter turns to the conception of ‘legitimate’ knowledge, first examining constructions of ‘legitimacy’, drawing on political, sociological, and philosophical conceptions. The construction of legitimate knowledge in relation to the conceptions of belief, truth, and justification are considered. In addition, debates pertaining to the recent discourses of the democratisation of knowledge, linked to the notion of ‘expertise’ and ‘stakeholders’, indigenous knowledge and decolonising knowledge are discussed; this entails a critical exploration of various types of factors complicit in the formulation of knowledge, including positionality, with respect to class, political interest, gender, race, and so on; university diversity initiatives; disciplinary quality; methodology and the ‘Canon’; skills, employment, and research assessment initiatives; funding and international partnerships; and global legitimating systems such as global university rankings, publication systems, and citation practices. Furthermore, it is argued that the production of research does not sit outside these positionalities and the politics of knowledge production.

This chapter analyses the alternative scenarios of how a multilateral investment court could come about, including an assessment of existing international frameworks that are likely to host that institution (e.g. the WTO, OECD, ICSID and UNCITRAL). The author argues that the EU’s active engagement in the field could fall victim to its own success – if it ever becomes successful, that is. If the proposed ICS turns out to be effective, efficient and accepted as more legitimate than investor-state arbitration, it might in fact inhibit the efforts of establishing a multilateral investment court. Alternatively, the increasing use of these instruments could result in a creeping multilateralization, creating a quasi-multilateral network of treaty-centred investment courts, a shrine to Western neoliberal values. A glimpse of hope, on the other hand, might come as a spin-off effect of current developments, should existing frameworks such as ICSID, UNCITRAL and the WTO rise to the occasion.