Author Archives

Unknown's avatar

Other News Sources

Devilry, Complicity, and Greed: Transitional Justice and Odious Debt

(June 1, 2007) The doctrine of odious debts came into its full in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century to deal with the financial injustices of colonialism and its stalking horse, despotism. The basic rule, as articulated by Alexander Sack in 1927, is that debts incurred by an illegitimate regime that neither benefit nor have the consent of the people of a territory are personal to the regime and are subject to unilateral recision by a successor government.

Odious debt in retrospect

(May 30, 2007) Current interest in the problem of “odious debt” is intertwined with other problems that afflict many developing and emerging market countries: despotic governments, unsustainable external debt burdens, and large-scale official corruption. If the universe of odious debt cases is relatively small, then it is likely uneconomical to develop an extensive legal apparatus ex ante.