A legal perspective on the economic crisis of 2008

Abstract

The 2008 global financial meltdown was the symptom of an underlying crisis in law and institutions caused by the neoliberal utopia of Total Market –“scientific” depoliticization of the economy, full commodification of labour, land and money, and all-out competition, with even legal systems subject to “law shopping”. Financial markets were so successfully deregulated, they were the first to collapse: taxpayers are now paying the bills. But the markets for natural and “human resources” are also at risk. In the spirit of the 1944 Declaration of Philadelphia, Supiot argues, the rule of law must be reinstated to end human subordination to economic efficiency.