How Inequality Distorts the Law - ft. Katharina Pistor

If we want to understand why capitalism feels broken, do we need to stop looking at the economy and start looking at the legal code that underpins it? In our system, capital is often described as money, machinery, or raw materials. But Columbia Law School professor Katharina Pistor argues that capital is actually a legal invention. An asset, whether it's a plot of land, an idea, or a promise of future pay, only becomes capital when it is given the right legal coding. Pistor suggests that lawyers are the true coders of capitalism. They use the law to "enclose" assets, from land to user data, giving owners the power to exclude others and monetize that value. She argues for injecting principles of "fairness and reciprocity" back into private law, ensuring that contracts aren't just tools for the powerful to extract value from the weak. Luigi Zingales suggests that large corporations have become so powerful we may need a new branch of "quasi-public law" to govern the asymmetry between an individual consumer and a corporate giant. This episode explores the deep, often invisible architecture of our economic system and asks whether we can ever truly tame corporate power without rewriting the rules of the game.

You can listen to How Inequality Distorts the Law - ft. Katharina Pistor online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

How Inequality Distorts the Law - ft. Katharina Pistor is an episode from Capitalisn't by University of Chicago Podcast Network.

This episode is 00:48:57 long.

This episode was published on Feb 19, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Capitalisn't when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.