Cornell Law Professor Speaks on Sovereign Debt

Governments should be flexible and creative in their treatment of sovereign debt, according to a Cornell Law School professor who spoke in Robinson Hall last night.

In front of an audience of students, faculty, and members of the public, Odette Lienau, an assistant professor of law at Cornell University, read from and led a discussion on her forthcoming paper, “Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Debt and Reputation in the Twentieth Century.”

In the paper, Lienau challenges “the general rule that sovereign states should repay debt even after a major regime change.” Citing such recent examples as Iraq and the Soviet Union, she argues that “sovereign debt continuity...is not as monolithic or natural as it first appears.”

“Should the new, black-African led South Africa really be expected to repay apartheid-era debt?” Lineau asks in the paper.

At the event, Lineau said that the questions in her paper constitute “living concepts that need to be studied in the contemporary moment.”

About 40 people attended the lecture, half of whom were students. After Lineau spoke, the floor was opened to the audience for comments and questions. Charles S. Maier, a professor of history at Harvard, and Kazi Sabeel Rahman, a graduate student in the Harvard Government Department, served as commentators and began the discussion.

Although the audience seemed to agree with Lineau’s general premise, they questioned the professor on the specifics of her paper.

The session was part of a continuing workshop on the “Political Economy of Modern Capitalism” offered to students in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Law School. Most of the sessions in the workshop are open to all.

“The idea of the seminar is to recognize that the political economy requires interdisciplinary work,” said Christine Desan, a professor at the Law School and one of the faculty chairs of the workshop.

The subject of Lienau’s paper fit the series because, according to Desan, it examines “sovereign debt as something that has legal doctrines and could be changed.”