The discourse of the WTO judge and of the investment arbitrator with respect to legal sources traditionally dubbed “exogenous” or “non-economic” oscillates between two positions. The first such position is distinguished by the achievement of hegemony through expansion. The judge uses a language of dissemination, striving to make their own idiom the dominant form of legal expression and subordinate “non-economic” to “economic” considerations. The second position is marked by the achievement of hegemony through isolation. Here the judge prefers to use a discourse of containment in order to ensure that their power is not contested, cordoning the “economic” off from the “non-economic”. Both positions are the work of ideology, and both are capable of being illuminated through Gramscian analysis.