It’s a Lawyers’ World!: A Commentary on Katharina Pistor, The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It

Authors

• Ingo Venzke, University of Amsterdam

Abstract

Affirming Katharina Pistor’s significant contributions to understanding law’s centrality in capitalism, this commentary explores the tension between law’s stabilizing function and its potential for change. Regarding the drivers of change, the commentary highlights an unexpected, unspoken love for lawyers. Those “masters of the code of capital” have made the law into what it is today, and now they should remake it. Could they, even if they wanted to? What would that something else be? By freeing herself from the binary choice between capitalism and socialism, Pistor inevitably raises the question of what socioeconomic system will emerge instead. If The Code of Capital and The Law of Capitalism are shaping up towards a trilogy, the commentary formulates this wish for the last part: a further inquiry into the conjunctures that would enable transformations with and against the law.

Recommended Citation

Ingo Venzke, It’s a Lawyers’ World!: A Commentary on Katharina Pistor, The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It, 80 U. Mia. L. Rev. 583 (2026).