The Codemaster | The Laws of Capitalism Episode 5

In this episode, Prof. Katharina Pistor explains the role of private lawyers in coding capital.

Prof. Pistor explains how Private Attorneys are the masters of the code. Despite the fact that the State and juridical precedent establishes the law, it is private attorneys who find the flaws, loopholes, or inaccuracies in the legal code. She goes through the history of private lawyers in Prussia, France, and their emergence in the American legal system. We find the importance of private lawyers in shaping and molding the legal code over time. She ends the episode by reflecting on the vast amounts of wealth private law firms, and lawyers accumulate today. With a specific reference to the delicate relationship between the UK’s Magic Circle of Firms and Russian Oligarchs.

[BradSamuelsPro]

Professor Pistor is out here teaching the world for free. Thank you for this video series. The Code of Capital was an exceedingly illuminating read.

[WebSecurityOfficer]

This series is fantastically useful! I have been looking for economics education like this for years. It's a bit dense to comprehend without any background in the field, but I'm game for the challenge. more please!

[nickhbt]

Since the emergence of the "Rule of Law" the law has been the rule set of the game of life. Those who write the rules in their own interest and those who interpret it in their own interest are in tension with those who write and interpret it in the interests of a wider society. Where the kleptocrats prevail nations fail.

[meks]

That intro should be the hook for a hit song. I don't want to ever forget it.

[har]

For someone that came out of Big Law.... she's not wrong

[HealingSwordsman]

No one can afford it Lol if a company enters a contract with you they can bend or break the rules knowing the harmed can't possibly pay it.

What a croc.

[palingram]

With smart contracts, lawyers in their current form will soon be a thing of the past

[johnbrooks]

Get real. There's no such thing as capitalism, certainly not any more. Who pays to build the roads? Who pays to grow the food? Who pays to teach the kids? Who pays to fund the banks? The American economy does not operate according to markets, and hasn't for a very long time. Virtually, every industry across the entire economy is massively consolidated and utterly dependent on government expenditure and regulation (why are so many of America's richest neighborhoods in the suburban counties surrounding DC?). This corporate socialism is a decadent and dysfunctional socialism, but it is a form of socialism nonetheless. Yet, so long as the Left itself insists on calling it capitalism, well, then the Right has already won the argument. In order for people like Katherina Pistor to get to Columbia, they have to endorse underlying assumptions even as they superficially critique them. That's just how ideology works.

[katiethepro]

In this episode, this speaker is inviting anarchy. The means by which to do so have their soundings in verbal compounds or components which sound like words of educative wisdom but their sound is that similar to the 'just stop oil' campaigners. Now it's time to take legal professionals out of action.
To have fresh new thinking is important however to destroy legalities altogether is really quite dangerous for society to function. Some people have no use for a mouth. They are bored of eating so they now use their mouths to voice radically stirring of the global online pot of verbal radicalisation. There is no capitalism if there is no courts of law because you have to have equality for all so that I and my bosses can then control you better. Radicalisation is not the antidote to capitalism. Are you not following your own dissertation? Interesting...

[Noland]

I hope she is not arguing for a return to the rights of kings & authoritarian states. The right to private property & its benefits are a core support of freedom from state suppression.