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The Code of Capital
Book

The Code of Capital

How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality

Katharina Pistor
Princeton UP, 2019

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Visionary
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Professor of comparative law and director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation at Columbia Law School, Katharina Pistor, argues that the “persistent incrementalism” of asset holders who employ the law and lawyers who “code” their capital is an underestimated factor in the study of economics. The author brings a new perspective and vocabulary to commonly discussed issues and is cuttingly critical of the status quo. Without disputing the main tenets of the benefits of free market economics, Pistor highlights that states permit the interests of the wealthy – through their lawyers – to corrupt commerce in their favor.

Take-Aways

  • Economists don’t recognize how law and lawyers affect the practicalities of business and the distribution of income.
  • The gradual transformation of land ownership rights in England illustrates the “coding of capital.”
  • Contentious land enclosures of the past have commonalities with today’s coders enclosing modern commons in areas like genetics.

About the Author

Professor of comparative law and director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation at Columbia Law School Katharina Pistor also co-authored Law and Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development around the World.

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