The Laws of Capitalism

This session of the webinar series will feature Prof. Katharina Pistor. She is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and director of the Law School's Center on Global Legal Transformation.

Abstract

Why is capitalism, a system that is coded in law so resilient to legal governance? In an attempt to solve this problem, I identify three laws of capitalist law: Individual entitlements; legal arbitrage; and decentralized access to the centralized means of coercion. Understanding how these laws operate individually and how they interact with each other, I argue, is critical for reforming this system to address the weakening of democratic self-governance, but also the challenge of climate change.

Speaker's Bio

Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and director of the Law School's Center on Global Legal Transformation. Her work spans comparative law and corporate governance, law and finance, and law and development. Her most recent book is "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (2019), Princeton University Press.

Format

Prof. Katharina Pistor will be speaking for the first 45 minutes. We will then be holding a Q&A Session.

This session is part of the larger project:

Season II Dissecting Capitalism: Its past, present and future

This series aims to explore the tenets of capitalism over the fabric of time and examine its influence on the global economy and social classes.

More information on Season I