Law

Prof. Katharina Pistor

Honorary degree - Faculty of Law 2024

Prof. Katharina Pistor

Honorary degree - Faculty of Law 2024

The Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp invited you to the masterclass and official conferral of the honorary degree to Prof. Katharina Pistor, on Thursday 28 March 2024.

Nominator: Prof. Thalia Kruger

About Katharina Pistor

Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School. She will be receiving a doctorate honoris causa from the Law Faculty of the University of Antwerp for her groundbreaking work in law, wealth creation and inequality. Besides the Code of Capital, which the Financial Times and the Business Insider have named one of the best books of 2019, she is the (co-)author and editor of eight other books and many scholarly articles. Her expertise covers corporate governance, money and governance, and property rights. She critically investigates the role of the law in current societal structures.

Abstract

Capitalism is often depicted as an economic system, but may be better described as a legal regime based on the antithesis of public and private ordering with priority given to the latter. Capitalist law empowers private actors, grants them access to the state’s means of coercion, and under-writes legal arbitrage that advances the interests of capital. Recognizing the centrality of law to capitalism implies that a transformation of capitalism must entail the transformation of the legal institutions that sustain it. In this master class, Pistor will present the core theses of her new book and discuss the transformative potential of law.

The masterclass "Can Capitalism be overcome through Law" is available here. 

This is a preview of Katharina Pistor’s next book, building on the renowned Code of Capital. In the new book, she will analyse capitalism and the features of capitalist law that have made it so durable.