Dr Joseph Spooner

Dr Joseph Spooner

Associate Professor of Law

LSE Law School

Telephone
020-7106-1174
Room No
New Academic Building 6.32
Languages
English
Key Expertise
Law

About me

Dr Joseph Spooner is an Associate Professor at LSE Law School. He researches issues of law, policy, and politics relating to household debt, over-indebtedness, and financialisation. He has obtained policy experience contributing to the World Bank’s Report on the Treatment of the Insolvency of Natural Persons (2013), as well as working on the Law Reform Commission of Ireland’s project on personal debt management and debt enforcement (2010-2012). Joseph has published articles on the law and politics of bankruptcy in leading journals including the Journal of Law and Society and the Modern Law Review, and is the author of Bankruptcy: the Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt. This book explores the unsustainable nature of our contemporary debt-dependent economy, and argues that bankruptcy law is uniquely situated to offer public policy benefits as a mechanism of social insurance against the risks inherent in this economic order.

Administrative support: Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk

Research interests

Joseph’s primary field of research is the law relating to consumer/household indebtedness, with a particular focus on personal insolvency law. His doctoral research considers the challenges to traditional personal insolvency principles and doctrines presented in recent decades by the evolving socio-economic and political role of consumer credit and the emergence of the phenomenon of household over-indebtedness. As well as works on personal insolvency law and policy reform, Joseph has also written on consumer credit regulation and the law relating to the enforcement of judgment debts.

External activities

Member of the World Bank Task Force on Insolvency and Creditor/Debtor Regimes and contributor to the Report on the Treatment of the Insolvency of Natural Persons. 

Member of the following Research Networks and Associations:

- LSA International Research Collaborative on Household Debt and Insolvency
- INSOL International
- Socio-Legal Studies Association
- European Consortium for Political Research, Standing Group on Regulatory Governance

 

Teaching

Books

Bankruptcy: The Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

click here for publisher's site

Articles