Sublime

For centuries, private attorneys have molded and adapted these legal modules to a changing roster of assets and have thereby enhanced their clients’ wealth. And states have supported the coding of capital by offering their coercive law powers to enforce the legal rights that have been bestowed on capital.

The most important ones are contract law, property rights, collateral law, trust, corporate, and bankruptcy law. These are the modules from which capital is coded. They bestow important attributes on assets and thereby privilege its holder: Priority, which ranks competing claims to the same assets; durability, which extends priority claims in time;

Everywhere we probed a little deeper, we found the core institutions of private law: contract, property, collateral, trust, corporate, and bankruptcy law.

Two legal systems dominate the world of global capital: English common law and the laws of New York State.

The craftsmanship of their lawyers, the code’s masters, explains the adaptability of the code to the ever-changing roster of assets; and the wealth-creating benefits of capital help explain why states have been only too willing to vindicate and enforce innovative legal coding strategies.

Realizing the centrality and power of law for coding capital has important implications for understanding the political economy of capitalism.