Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

Legal aspects of globalisation

Anno accademico 2016/2017

Sommario insegnamento

• Obiettivi formativi
• Risultati dell'apprendimento attesi
• Modalità di insegnamento
• Modalità di verifica dell'apprendimento
• Programma
• Testi consigliati e bibliografia
• Note
• Strumenti didattici

Obiettivi formativi

Risultati dell'apprendimento attesi

Modalità di insegnamento

Modalità di verifica dell'apprendimento

Programma

The course will be divided in four parts:

(1) Economic theories’ narrative about money and financial institutions: law as a blind spot of economics;

(2) Regulatory frameworks of finance: the example of the European Union;

(3) The foundational force of law in finance; pars s pro toto: the plasticity of legal institutions and their potential for change;

(4) Alternatives within finance: responses to the current crisi

Mainstream economic theories   do not explain the origin of money in contemporary societies. This observation applies to neo-classical and monetarist economic theories as well as to Keynesian variations of the mainstream. To the extent it considers this issue of relevance for economic analysis the mainstream mystifies money and evaporates its origins in unfounded historic tales about facilitations of exchange. In this respect, money is just another barter commodity for the neo-classic and the medium of credit for Keynesian economics.

Mainstream economic theories relate to the insights of other social sciences and the humanities as auxiliary, at best. To the extent economics purport to being more than bad mathematics, its policy advice is based upon simplifying notions of power, politics and law. 

Law in particular is a black box for economic theories.  The foundational force of law – also in relation to the most important social institution of modern capitalism: money – is beyond the economic mainstream’s grasp of social reality. The causal nexus between certain institutes of private law and money and the constructive power of public law within a globalized economy are not being analysed. 

Correspondingly, prevailing methods of legal analysis and jurisprudence -- most prominently, law and economics – assume that mainstream economics shape the foundational rationality of social organization. These methods of legal analysis are built upon rationalities taken from the economic mainstream.

References to the institutions of global finance, global trade and other elements of an economic world order, degenerate, within the mainstream, to reminders of a supposedly unmodifiable logic of economic and social development.  In this view, global order is the institutional framework for path dependent development. 

The pluralism of legal traditions and institutions, the indeterminacy of these institutions and the governing effect of law upon social reality, escape the mainstream. 

Jurisprudence of finance is a distinct area of legal analysis. Its point of departure is the structuring power of law in society. Its focus is the monetization of social activities and specific institutions of money and finance which developed within global capitalism as result of developments of private and public law.  In particular, the nexus of property rights – ownership in particular – and finance, is at the core of this distinct area of legal analysis.  This nexus is not of a simple causal nature. While a certain abstraction (and complexity) of property rights, their emancipation from factual control, poses a pre-condition for originating money, financial transactions have been the cause for the further shaping of property rights. With financial institutions at the centre of regulation of markets, property rights increasingly escape the frameworks of a scholastic jurisprudence. To make an example, property is an economic right as well as a political one. Faculties of public law migrate into the realm of private law, etc.

Note

AVVISO IMPORTANTE:

Gli studenti intenzionati a frequentare l'insegnamento di Legal aspects of globalisation sono pregati di segnalarlo al prof. Michele Graziadei michele.graziadei@unito.it entro lunedì 27 marzo 2017.

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