LAWS6265 · Law

Law and Public Finance

Boston College Law School

A hopelessly indebted satirist once wrote that "those who made the laws have apparently supposed that every deficiency of payment is the crime of the debtor." In no relation between debtor and creditor has this claim borne out more clearly than the relation between government debtors and their many creditors. This seminar will explore how interactions between creditors and debtor governments defined the theory and practice sovereignty, the legal and political basis of the power of cities, states/provinces, and nations. Moving between the historical past and present and comparing across jurisdictions, we will explore how public debt shaped the sovereignty in the context of U.S. federalism, international law, and international investment law. We will engage questions in contract law, international law, international investment law, and corporations together with empirical studies from history, economics, and political science. Along the way, we will see how the laws distribution of power between public debtors and creditors absorbed theories of racial inferiority, financial capitalism, and democracy and produced (and reproduce into the present) the structures of racial capitalism and globalized inequality.