On 17 June 2026, the Department of Business and Economics Law at Luiss Guido Carli hosted the presentation of The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It by Katharina Pistor, Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School. The event took place at the Luiss campus in Via Parenzo 11, Rome. It also served as the inaugural session of the newly established FADE Distinguished Speaker Series.
The Event
Institutional greetings were delivered by Antonio Gullo, Deputy Rector for Education and Dean of the Undergraduate School, and by Barbara De Donno, Head of the Department of Business and Economics Law. The discussion with the author featured Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi, Justice of the Italian Constitutional Court, as well as Professors Pietro Reichlin and Antonio Davola as discussants.
Law as a Constitutive Force of Capitalism
The debate took Pistor’s monograph as its point of departure. At the centre of The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It lies a thesis that is at once jurisprudential and political-economic: capitalism is not a spontaneous order of markets. Rather, it is a legal construct, sustained by the selective allocation of enforceable rights. Consequently, law does not merely regulate pre-existing economic arrangements — it constitutes them.
The discussion developed this argument further, examining its normative implications. If capitalism is a legal artefact, then transforming it requires transforming law. Moreover, such transformation is not only technically feasible but normatively justified wherever existing legal structures entrench inequality and foreclose substantive justice.
Launch of the FADE Observatory
The event also marked the official launch of the Observatory on Fairness and Autonomy in Digital Ecosystems (FADE), directed by Professor Antonio Davola and established within the Department of Business and Economics Law at Luiss. The FADE Observatory pursues an interdisciplinary research agenda at the intersection of private law, competition law, and the regulation of digital platforms. In particular, it focuses on the conditions under which digital architectures either enable or undermine individual autonomy and fair market participation.
The Distinguished Speaker Series — of which this event constitutes the inaugural edition — is designed to bring leading international scholars into dialogue with the Luiss academic community. Future sessions will continue to address foundational questions at the frontier of law, economics, and technology.