Noting that the rule of law has replaced Christianization as ideological justification for Western wars of aggression and often-violent extraction of resources from weaker parties, Mattei (international and comparative law, U. of California at Hastings) and Nader (anthropology, U. of California at Berkeley) wonder why there has been little examination of its role in colonialism and later corporate neo-imperialism. They take up the task in this historical examination of the rule of law as an instrument of plunder. They examine structural adjustment, comprehensive development, and the conditionally imposed ruled of law and the plunder of contemporary Argentina at the hands of the International Monetary Fund and Wall Street; the connections between neoliberalism and colonialism; the law of patents and intellectual property rights as a form of the plunder of ideas; intellectual justification of plunder by reference to the rule of law; the legally facilitated plunder of Iraq's oil under US occupation; global legal transformation as an unfolding of hegemonic imperial law; and the role of imperialism in transforming the rule of law within the United States. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)