Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2013
Abstract
This paper develops the building blocks for a legal theory of finance. LTF holds that financial markets are legally constructed and as such occupy an essentially hybrid place between state and market, public and private. At the same time, financial markets exhibit dynamics that frequently put them in direct tension with commitments enshrined in law or contracts. This is the case especially in times of financial crisis when the full enforcement of legal commitments would result in the self-destruction of the financial system. This law-finance paradox tends to be resolved by suspending the full force of law where the survival of the system is at stake; that is, at its apex. It is here that power becomes salient.
Disciplines
Banking and Finance Law | Law | Law and Economics | Public Law and Legal Theory
Recommended Citation
Katharina Pistor,
A Legal Theory of Finance,
Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 41, p. 315, 2013; Columbia Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper No. 13-348
(2013).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2283
Included in
Banking and Finance Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons