Law Commons^™

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 …