The Legal Case for Debt Repudiation
The Legal Case for Debt Repudiation
This chapter briefly describes the tremendous social and economic costs of overindebtedness and the role of Northern creditors and governments in solving debt problems. It then sets forth legal reasons for the need for debt repudiation and/or relief: (1) the heightened level of responsibility of creditors and Northern governments; (2) violations of human rights, and (3) the illegitimacy of debt. These arguments are based on well-established principles of domestic and international law that are applicable to domestic proceedings and relevant to a future international insolvency mechanism. The arguments serve to challenge popular or political understandings of the legal sanctity of debt, thereby creating space and support for more ambitious solutions to debt crises.
Keywords: illegitimate debts, overindebtedness, debt relief, creditor obligations, human rights, international insolvency mechanism
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
