A compelling explanation of how the law shapes the distribution of
wealth
Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people
have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that
transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more
wealth? The Code of Capital explains 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.
In this revealing
book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively “codes”
certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and
produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object,
claim, or idea can be turned into capital—and lawyers are the
keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among
different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best
serve their clients’ needs, and how techniques that were first
perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being
used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations—assets
that exist only in law.
A powerful new way
of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time,
The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt,
complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give
financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a
troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the
people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.
Katharina Pistor is
the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law and director of the
Center on Global Legal Transformation at Columbia Law School. She is
the coauthor of Law and Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal
about Legal Systems and Economic Development around the World and the
coeditor of Governing Access to Essential Resources. She lives in New
York City.