Law Commons^™

Sovereign Debt And The “Contracts Matter” Hypothesis, W. Mark C. Weidemaier, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The academic literature on sovereign debt largely assumes that law has little role to play. Indeed, the primary question addressed by the literature is why sovereigns repay at all given the irrelevance of legal enforcement. But if law, and specifically contract law, does not matter, how to explain the fact that sovereign loans involve detailed contracts, expensive lawyers, and frequent litigation? This Essay makes the case that contract design matters even in a world where sovereign borrowers are hard (but not impossible) to sue. We identify a number of gaps in the research that warrant further investigation.

Differing Perceptions? Market Practice And The Evolution Of Foreign Sovereign Immunity, W. Mark C. Weidemaier, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The 20th century witnessed a transformative, “tectonic” shift in international law, from “absolute” to “restrictive” theories of sovereign immunity. As conventionally understood, however, this dramatic transformation represented only a shift in the default rule. Under absolute immunity, national courts could not hear lawsuits and enforce judgments against a foreign sovereign without its consent. Under restrictive immunity, foreign sovereigns were presumptively not immune when they engaged in commercial acts. We demonstrate that market practices undermine this conventional understanding. Using an extensive, two-century data set of contracts between foreign governments and private creditors, we show that contracting parties have long treated absolute …

A Model-Law Approach To Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Unresolved sovereign debt problems are hurting debtor nations, their citizens and their creditors, and also can pose serious systemic threats to the international financial system. The existing contractual restructuring approach is insufficient to make sovereign debt sustainable. Although a more systematic legal resolution framework is needed, a formal multilateral approach, such as a treaty, is not currently politically viable.

An informal model-law approach should be legally, politically and economically feasible. Individual countries could enact the proposed model law as their domestic law. Because most sovereign debt contracts are governed by either New York or English law, it would be especially …