Debtors, Debt Relief, and American Political Development

• In Event: Inequality and the Politics of Consumer Debt and Debt Relief

Abstract

In this introduction to a larger book project, we call attention to the influence of debtor politics on the development of the American state, paying particular attention to the role of racial politics in determining which debtors sought and obtained the government’s protections. We make four central claims: First, we demonstrate that, over the course of the nineteenth century, over-indebted people and their advocates recast governments’ role in instances of insolvency. Through organized movements, they insisted that government could decide whether or not to enforce debts if that enforcement would be ruinous to the debtor, and they built a network of state and federal policies through which government intervened to protect borrowers who could not pay their debts. Second, these political developments were not only changes in public policy, but also required fundamental shifts in constitutional meaning. Third, we demonstrate that twentieth-century consumer debtors faced an economic environment and a particular history with credit that made it especially hard for them to organize, and that the non-emergence of a twentieth-century debtors’ movement allowed for the erosion of protective debt relief. Finally, we emphasize that even at their most robust, America’s debtor protections have been partial at best and unevenly experienced. Throughout the development, and dismantling, of debt relief in America, Black Americans have experienced a different, and far less protective, state.

Authors

• Chloe Thurston, Northwestern University

• Emily Zackin, Johns Hopkins University