About

W. Mark C. Weidemaier is the Ralph M. Stockton, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His teaching and research interests involve the intersection between contracts and dispute resolution in domestic and international settings, as well as issues related to the structure and enforcement of government debt. He blogs about these subjects on Credit Slips and hosts the podcast Clauses and Controversies, covering topics in sovereign debt and international finance. Weidemaier teaches courses including Contracts, Commercial Arbitration, Government Borrowing and Restructuring, and Complex Civil Litigation. He graduated from Carleton College and the University of Minnesota Law School. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He practiced law in the complex commercial litigation group at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia and worked at the School of Government at UNC. His research and publications focus on sovereign debt, dispute resolution, and related legal issues, contributing to scholarly discussions through various articles and media appearances.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Finance
• Business
• Economic policy
• Financial system
• Law
• Economics
• International economics
• Development economics

Selected publications

• Odious Debts: The Power of a Mythical Doctrine

  Edward Elgar Publishing Limited eBooks · 2026-03-20

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• “Delicate and Embarassing”: U.S. Loans to Suppress Haitian Independence

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Odious Debts: The Power of a Mythical Doctrine

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Obscure Contract Terms: An Inadvertent Pricing Experiment

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Judgment-Holder Problem in Sovereign Debt Workouts

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Obscure contract terms: an inadvertent pricing experiment

  Capital Markets Law Journal · 2024-06-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Bonds and other tradable securities are issued pursuant to detailed, lengthy contracts that govern investors’ legal rights. These are largely standardized, form contracts, but the fine print can vary. From first principles, it seems that market prices should be sensitive to differences in the underlying contract, at least when those differences impact investors’ legal rights. In markets that tend towards efficiency, the price of a security should incorporate public information about the security and its issuer. For example, if two securities are otherwise identical, but one confers contractual rights that might prove valuable in a default, one would expect investors to assign greater value to the more protective security. One should particularly expect that effect to manifest itself for riskier securities and as default becomes more likely. If this does not happen, it creates an arbitrage opportunity for sophisticated investors, whose trades should move the market towards efficiency.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Green Bonds, Empty Promises

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A DEBT OF DISHONOR

  Dépôt institutionnel de l'Université libre de Bruxelles (Université Libre de Bruxelles) · 2022-05-01

  articleOpen access

  In 1825, France conditioned its grant of recognition to the new nation of Haiti on the payment of 150 million francs plus trade benefits. The payments were, at least in part, compensation for the losses that French plantation owners suffered, a key part of which was the loss of enslaved Haitians, who took their freedom via revolution. France has officially apologized and acknowledged a “moral debt” that it owes the Haitian people. But is there a legal debt that Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world, could claim today from France, one of the richest?.

  PublisherOA PDF

• A Silver Lining to Russia's Sanctions-Busting Clause?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Odious Haitian Independence Debt

  Journal of Globalization and Development · 2022-09-16 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract This article introduces the Haitian Independence Debt of 1825 to the odious debt and sovereign debt literatures. We argue that the legal doctrine of odious debt is surprisingly and perhaps indefensibly narrow, possibly because of historical contingency rather than any underlying logic or principle. The story of the Haitian Independence Debt of 1825 serves as an illustrative case study. In the context of telling that story, we provide estimates of the evolution of Haiti’s external debt-to-GDP ratio over 1825–2020, and discuss the implications of the independence debt for the economy of Haiti. We conclude by discussing the implications of Haiti’s Independence Debt for the doctrine of odious debt and the possibilities for Haiti to recover compensation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mitu Gulati

  26 shared

• Ugo Panizza

  12 shared

• Robert E. Scott

  8 shared

• Anna Gelpern

  Georgetown University

  4 shared

• Kim Oosterlinck

  Université Libre de Bruxelles

  4 shared

• Stephen J. Choi

  New York Law School

  3 shared

• Susan Block‐Lieb

  3 shared

• Grégoire Mallard

  Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

  3 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Law

  University of Virginia

  1999

• Other, Law

  University of Virginia

  1996

• B.A., Political Science

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1993