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Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
The shrinking middle class and the widening gap between the rich and the poor constitute significant threats to social and financial stability. One of the main impediments to upward mobility is the inability of economically disadvantaged people to use their property — in which they sometimes hold only de facto, not de jure, rights — as collateral to obtain credit. This Article argues that commercial law should recognize those de facto rights, enabling the poor to borrow to start businesses or otherwise create wealth. Recognition not only would provide benefits that exceed its costs; it also would be consistent with, …