[further explanation needed] The concept of odious debt was formalized in a 1927 treatise by Alexander Nahum Sack, a Russian émigré legal theorist.
[7] Chief Justice William Howard Taft, acting as an arbiter, used the doctrine in 1923 to find that Costa Rica did not have to pay the United Kingdom debts incurred by the Federico Tinoco Granados regime.
"[9] Patricia Adams, executive director of Probe International, a Canadian environmental and public policy advocacy organization and author of Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption, and the Third World's Environmental Legacy, stated: "by giving creditors an incentive to lend only for purposes that are transparent and of public benefit, future tyrants will lose their ability to finance their armies, and thus the war on terror and the cause of world peace will be better served.
"[10] In a Cato Institute policy analysis, Adams suggested that debts incurred by Iraq during Saddam Hussein's reign were odious because the money was spent on weapons, instruments of repression, and palaces.
[18] After acquiring Puerto Rico through the Spanish–American War, the United States refused to pay the colony's creditors, asserting they held odious debt.