Rohan Grey

Professor Grey’s research focuses on the legal design and regulation of money and finance, including digital fiat currency, as well as broader issues of law and political economy. He teaches Contracts, Business Organizations, and Securities Regulation. He previously co-taught seminars on Fintech and Monies with Professor Robert Hockett at Cornell Law School, where he was a fellow with the Clarke Business Law Institute’s Program on the Law and Regulation of Financial Institutions and Markets, and facilitated a reading group on Law, Money, and Finance at Columbia Law School with Professor Jeffrey N. Gordon.

Grey is the research director of the Digital Fiat Currency Institute, a consultant to the UN International Telecommunications Union’s Focus Group on Digital Currency, and a network manager with the FreedomBox Foundation, which develops privacy and freedom-respecting software for personal use. He is also the president of the Modern Money Network, a research fellow with the Global Institute of Sustainable Prosperity, a director of the National Jobs for All Network, and a member of ClassCrits and the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law (APPEAL). 

Prior to entering legal academia, Grey practiced law in New York City as an attorney for children with Lawyers for Children and the Children’s Law Center, where he focused on issues relating to custody & visitation, abuse & neglect, guardianship, and foster care. During law school, he served as articles editor and digital editor of the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems, as well as director of the High School Law Institute’s moot court program. He also interned for U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV (S.D.N.Y.), Judge Fredericka H. Wicker of the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, the National Center for Youth Law, the Legal Aid Society’s Education Advocacy Project, Oklahoma Lawyers for Children, and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. In addition, he has consulted with the Louisiana Sentencing Commission, the New York Reentry Education Network, the New York City Department of Education, and Americans for the Arts. 

Before law school, Grey worked as a professional musician, and an elementary and secondary school music and social studies teacher at Harlem Children’s Zone and St. Andrew’s Cathedral School, Sydney.

Education

• JSD, Cornell Law School (expected 2020)
• LLM, London School of Economics
• JD, Columbia Law School
• MA (Music Education), Columbia Teachers College
• BCrA (Music), University of Southern Queensland
• BA (International Relations, International Business), University of Sydney

Books

• Digitizing the Dollar: The Battle for the Soul of Public Money in the Age of Cryptocurrency (Melville House, forthcoming 2021)

Articles

• "Administering Money: Coinage, Debt Crises, and the Future of Fiscal Policy," 109 Ky. L. J. ___ (2020)
• "Smart Contracts in Monetary Policy," J. of L. Info. & Sci. __ (2020)   
• "Monetary Resilience,” 41(3) W. New. Eng. L. Rev. 505 (2019)
• "Money Isn’t Scarce: It’s Infinite," in 'Eleven Things They Don’t Tell You About Law and Economics: An Informal Introduction to Political Economy and the Law,' 37 L. & Ineq. 97 (2019)

Book Chapters

• "International Law, Global Finance, and the Internet Society," Tipping Points in International Law: Critique and Commitment (J. Haskell & J. d’Aspremont, Eds.) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020) 
• "Inflation Management in the Green New Deal Era," Green New Deal: Interdisciplinary Heterodox Perspectives (M. Murray & M. Forstater, Eds.) (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2020)  
• "Equality, Not Equal Pay: Distributional Justice Beyond Money," Debating Equal Pay For All: Economy, Practicability, and Ethics (A. Örtenblad, Ed.) (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2020)
• "Banking in a Digital Fiat Currency Regime," Regulating Blockchain: Techno-Social and Legal Challenges (Philipp Hacker, et al., Eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• "What is Money?," Rethinking Finance (Rethinking Economics Norway, 2019)
• "Who Owns the Intellectual Fruits of Job Guarantee Labor?" The Job Guarantee and Modern Money: Realizing Keynes's Labor Standard (M. Murray & M. Forstater, Eds.) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

Reports & White Papers

• "Regulatory Risks and Challenges for Central Bank Digital Currency," International Telecommunications Union - Focus Group on Digital Currency (2019)
• "The Macroeconomic Policy Implications of Digital Fiat Currency" (with Jonathan Dharmapalan), eCurrency Mint (2017)
• "Leveraging the Remake: The Role of the Arts in a Shifting Economy" (with Nora Halpern, et al.), Americans for the Arts (2012)
• "Artist as Entrepreneur: A Guide to Federal Economic Development Grants for Arts Organizations," Americans for the Arts (2011)

Editorials & Blogs

• "We Can Afford To Beat This Crisis," The Nation (March 20, 2020)
• "RIP Paul Volcker: The Fed Chair Who Thought We Lived Too Well," The Nation (December 11, 2019)
• "Facebook Wants Its Own Currency. That Should Scare Us All," The Nation (July 22, 2019)
• "Money and Property" (with Lua Yuille), Law and Political Economy Blog (May 16, 2019)
• "An MMT Response on What Causes Inflation" (with Nathan Tankus & Scott Fullwiler), Financial Times (March 1, 2019)
• "Do We Need a Federal Jobs Guarantee? A Debate" (with Raúl Carrillo), In These Times (June 19, 2018)
• "Do Negative Interest Rates Live Up To The Hype?," Oxford Business Law Blog (March 13, 2017)
• "A Memo from MMT’s Legal Department," New Economic Perspectives (July 15, 2017)
• "Between the (Balance) Sheets: Why Lawyers Need to Get Intimate With Accounting" (with the Modern Money Network, Columbia Law Chapter), Morningside Muckraker (May 6, 2015)
• "Free Culture? Free Finance" (with the Modern Money Network, Columbia Law Chapter), Morningside Muckraker (October 28, 2014)
• "Cheap Victories: Modern Money and the Roots of Campaign Finance Reform" (with Raúl Carrillo, Genia Gokhmark, Lily Vo, & Maria Schweinberger), Morningside Muckraker (September 30, 2014)

Podcast Interviews

• "Why the War on Cash is a War on Freedom," Odd Lots (April 17, 2020)
• "Monetary Policy," Ipse Dixit (April 2, 2020)
• "#MintTheCoin," Left Anchor (March 28, 2020)
• "Modern Monetary Theory and Intellectual Property," Ipse Dixit (October 24, 2019)
• "A Green New Tomorrow: A Survival Guide," Macro ‘n’ Cheese (September 28, 2019)
• "The Legal Nature of Money and the History of the Federal Reserve," Macro ‘n’ Cheese (September 21, 2019)
• "Digital Currency, Privacy, and Modern Monetary Theory," MacroMusings (February 11, 2019)
• "Digital Money Beyond Blockchain," Money on the Left (November 14, 2018)
• "Shaking the Money Tree" (with Raúl Carrillo), Current Affairs Podcast (October 11, 2018)
• "A Job Guarantee vs. A Universal Basic Income," MMT Podcast (July 8, 2018)

Congressional Testimony

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
Task Force on Financial Technology Hearing
Digitizing the Dollar: Investigating the Technological Infrastructure, Privacy, and Financial Inclusion Implications of Central Bank Digital Currencies (2021).