Law Commons^™

Unintended Agency Problems: How International Bureaucracies Are Built And Empowered, Anu Bradford, Stavros Gadinis, Katerina Linos

Faculty Scholarship

The ground underneath the entire liberal international order is rapidly shifting. Institutions as diverse as the European Union, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, and World Trade Organization are under major threat. These institutions reflect decades of political investments in a world order where institutionalized cooperation was considered an essential cornerstone for peace and prosperity. Going beyond the politics of the day, this Article argues that the seeds of today’s discontent with the international order were in fact sown back when these institutions were first created. We show how states initially design international institutions with features that later haunt them in …

The Dilemma Of Odious Debts, Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati, Robert B. Thompson

Center for Contract and Economic Organization

When a corrupt governmental regime borrows money in the name of the state, and then steals or squanders the proceeds, must the future citizens of that country repay the loan? The law says yes, but the moral instinct of most people says no.

The odious debt controversy is, at base, a struggle to find a workable legal doctrine that will avoid a morally repugnant result (visiting the sins of corrupt governors on innocent citizens), without undermining the legal basis of all sovereign borrowing. No counterparty, at least no commercial counterparty, would lend money to a sovereign believing that the loan …