Americans have a long history with debt. They also have a long history of mobilizing for debt relief. Throughout the nineteenth century, indebted citizens demanded government protection from their financial burdens, challenging readings of the Constitution that exalted property rights at the expense of the vulnerable.
Their appeals shaped the country’s periodic experiments with state debt relief and federal bankruptcy law, constituting a pre-industrial safety net. Yet, the twentieth century saw the erosion of debtor politics and the eventual retrenchment of bankruptcy protections.
The Political Development of American Debt Relief (University of Chicago Press, 2024) by Emily Zackin and Chole N. Thurston, traces how geographic, sectoral, and racial politics shaped debtor activism over time, enhancing our understanding of state-building, constitutionalism, and social policy.
The recent Supreme Court decisions overturning Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness and rejecting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium may suggest that these forays into debt relief were new and perhaps even impermissible, but this form of politics was a regular feature of American life from the American Revolution through the Great Depression.
Zackin and Thurston will lead a free virtual Zoom conversation about their book on Thursday, December 12th, at 8 pm ET.
They will discuss what lessons can be drawn from past periods of debtor mobilization, and consider when debtors are likely to succeed in shaping the law and understand how new demands for debt relief are impacting politics today.
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