[SGCEE] The Laws of Capitalism with Katharina Pistor

CEE General Seminar

Sciences Po, Room K.011, 1 place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin 75007 Paris, and via Zoom*
Compulsory Registration 

Abstract

Why is capitalism, a system that is made in law, so resilient to legal governance aimed at taming its worst excesses? The puzzle is not just a riddle on the nature of law or its (in-)ability to solve social issues. Its purpose is to explain why capitalism remains inequitable even after repeated attempts to tame it, is oblivious to climate change, and structurally incapable of correcting itself. To solve this puzzle, I offer three laws of capitalist law: (1) Subjective rights that are freed from corresponding legal obligations ; (2) Decentralized access to the centralized means of coercion ; and (3) Legal arbitrage that is not only condoned but inherent to capitalist law.

Podcast Sciences Po CEE · The Laws of Capitalism by Katharina Pistor (20 September 2022)

Speaker

Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School. Her work spans comparative law and corporate governance, law and finance, and law and development. She is the co-recipient of the Max Planck Research Award (2012), a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg and the European Academies of Science and a Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute. Her most recent book is The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton UP, 2019).

Chair 

Matthias Thiemann, Sciences Po, CEE 

Compulsory Registration

*The link will be sent after your registration