Annual Brooklyn Lecture on International Business Law, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality

Featuring
Katharina Pistor 
Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law;
Director, Center on Global Legal Transformation
Columbia Law School

About the Lecture 
Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. Instruments such as debt, complex financial products, and other assets have the ability to automatically create more wealth for their holders. In her new book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2019) Professor Katharina Pistor takes a close look at how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else. Pistor will discuss how the law selectively “codes” certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth, and how lawyers are the keepers of the code.
 
After the lecture, a panel of Brooklyn Law faculty will join Pistor to discuss the themes of her provocative new book.
 
Commentators
Julian Arato 
Professor of Law & Co-Director
Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law
Brooklyn Law School
 
Steven Dean 
Professor of Law
Brooklyn Law School
 
Robin Effron 
Professor of Law & Co-Director
Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law
Brooklyn Law School
 
Frank Pasquale 
Professor of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law; Visiting Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

Sponsored by the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law and the Brooklyn Journal of International Law.