Capitalism could not exist without the power and structure of the law — that’s the simple but radical argument made by my guest today, Katharina Pistor, law professor at Columbia University, and the author of The Code of Capital: How The Law Creates Wealth and Inequality. 

On today’s episode, we break down how the law ‘encodes’ capital and invisibly structures our world, from giving corporations the rights of a person, to obscure treaties that allow fossil fuel giants to sue governments when they attempt to act on climate. Ultimately, I ask Katharina whether the law can be harnessed as a force for progress on climate and ecological crisis, and what needs to change to break the legal deadlock.

Katharina Pistor is a professor at Columbia University Law School, where she is the Director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation. She is the author of several celebrated books, most recently of The Code of Capital (Princeton University Press).