Interfacing Private Law Lecture Series: Katharina Pistor

Interfacing Private Law Lecture Series: Katharina Pistor

Come join us for an exciting lecture by the renowned Katharina Pistor at the Roeterseilandcampus, building A, Room A3.15 (Moot Court) on her new book titled, The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It.

About the speaker

Katharina Pistor is researcher and writer on capitalism and capitalist law, the law of money and finance, comparative law and law and development. Katharina Pistor serves as the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School, which she joined in 2001. Previously she held teaching and research positions at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Law in Hamburg. She has also been visiting professor at the University of Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the London School of Economics, Oxford, and Tel Aviv University. She is an elected member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2015), the European Academy of Sciences (2021), and The Club of Rome (2024). In 2012 she received (with Martin Hellwig) the Max Planck Research Award on international financial regulation. In addition, she has received research grants by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the US National Science Foundation. She is one of the three co-directors of Columbia University’s Center for Political Economy, funded by a major grant by the Hewlett Foundation.

AbstractEven though capitalism has been conventionally described as an economic system, it is actually a deeply entrenched legal regime. Law provides the material for coding simple objects, promises, and ideas as capital assets. It also provides the means for avoiding the legal constraints that societies have frequently imposed on capitalism. Often lauded for creating levels of wealth unprecedented in human history, capitalism is also largely responsible for the two greatest problems now confronting humanity: the erosion of social and political cohesion, which undermines democratic self-governance, and the threats that emanate from climate change. By exploring the ways that Western legal systems empower individuals to advance their interests against society, Katharina Pistor reveals how capitalism is an unsustainable system designed to foster inequity. She offers ideas for rethinking how the transformation of the law and the economy can help us create a more just system—before it is too late.