Professor Christine Desan (profile)
Harvard Law School – Fall 2017
Course Overview (Description and Syllabus)
I. Governing at the Material Level
Class 1: The Dollar as a Democratic Medium
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 2: Money: the Basic Design
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 3: Money: the Modern Design (a very brief introduction)
Readings, Notes and Discussion
II. Experiments with Money: Economic Development, Sovereignty, and the Contest over Federalism (1690-1865)
Class 4: Money and Self-Determination — The Colonial Experience
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 5: Money and Nation-building – the Revolution and the Constitution
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 6: The New Federalist Approach to Money: Public Debt and National Banking
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 7: Revising Public Obligation: The Contracts Clause and Article I, Sec. 10
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 8: State Development Strategies in an Illiquid World: Banks and Corporations
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 9: Federalism Contested: Jackson and the Battle over the Bank(s)
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 10: Free Banking: The High Tide of State Power
Readings, Notes and Discussion
III. Configuring Federal Monetary Power (1865-Present)
Class 11: National Banking I: Federal Entry into Retail Banking
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 12: National Banking II: Constitutional Claims to Credit Outside the Commercial System
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 13: Conceptualizing the Modern Market: Gold, Futures, and Economic Expertise
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 14: “Fed-eralizing” the Monetary System
Guest lecturer: Prof. Nadav Orian Peer, Tulane Law School
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 15: Liberating the Fed: the Movement towards Discretionary Monetary Policy
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 16: Credit Allocation as a Political Project
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 17: Market Funding and Financialization
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 18: The Financial Crisis
Readings, Notes and Discussion
Class 19: The Constitutional Charge of Administrative Accountability and Independence: The Fed and Monetary Policy
Readings, Notes and Discussion
IV: Money in Constitutional Dimension: Contemporary Issues
Class 20: The Constitutional Right to Credit? Banking and the Unbanked
Class 21: Finance and Inequality
Class 22: Monetary Reform: Proposals to Restructure Money
Class 23: The Debate over Fiscal Policy: From Austerity to Full Employment Proposals
Class 24: Dreams about Money