A/70/275 (or partial payment) is itself a fairly regular occurr ence in sovereign debt, 26 just as in the consumer and business/company debt markets. Furthermore, to the extent that States have paid their debt obligations, seeming to act more in line with absolutist approaches to pacta sunt servanda, this behaviour has not necessarily been due to any sense of international legal obligation (or opinio juris) that might require such payment. To the extent that a payment obligation has been legally upheld, it has been due to particular domestic court interpretations of the relevant contract. 27 47. In the fields of economics and political science, it is fairly well established that attention to reputation and creditworthiness in capital markets has been central to sovereign debt repayment. 28 Countries are concerned that, if they fail to make debt payments, they will be unable to access capital at a reasonable cost in the future. This pragmatic reaction to markets, however, should not be confused with an absolute legal obligation to repay. Indeed, it exists entirely independently of any legal insolvency regime that might support and enforce the collective resolution of unpayable debt. This is why, in the domestic context, companies and individuals may avoid or defer the protection of insolvency proceedings if they can consensually resolve debt problems with their creditors. They balance the protection offered by the insolvency regime and the greater growth that ca n result from a more sustainable financial foundation with the possibility of higher capital cost s, at least in the short term. 29 This market element does not preclude the possibility of a legal insolvency regime, nor would it be adversely affected by such a regime. Indeed, the two are separate and entirely complementary. D. Pacta sunt servanda comprehensibly understood in debt restructurings 48. The Independent Expert argues that there is little reason to think that the rule of sovereign debt payment, derived from the more general principle of pacta sunt servanda, is absolute. Any contract is necessarily embedded in and conditioned by the broader rules and values of the community. In addition, the uniquely sovereign character of Governments implies an agency relationship with the underlying population that may obligate the Government further. There is no reason to think that past practice has created international law that would stand in the way of a sovereign debt workout regime attentive to these issues. And in practice a number of __________________ 26 27 28 29 14/18 See, inter alia, Rogoff, Kenneth and Zettelmeyer, Jeromin, “Bankruptcy Procedures for Sovereigns: A History of Ideas, 1976-2001”, IMF Staff Papers, 2002; Reinhart, Carmen M. and Rogoff, Kenneth, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton University Press, 2011); Trebesch, Christoph, Michael G. Papaioannou, Michael G, and Das, Udaibir S., “Sovereign Debt Restructurings 1950-2010: Literature Survey, Data, and Stylized Facts” , IMF Working Papers 12/203 (2012). The globally controversial decisions of courts in the United States of America in the dispute between Argentina and NML Capital, Ltd. are only the most recent of these interpretations. See A/HRC/28/85, cases ARG 2/2014, USA 15/2014 and OTH 10/2014. See Tomz, Michael, Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt Across Three Centuries (Princeton University Press, 2007) (general importance of reputation); and Odette Lienau, Rethinking Sovereign Debt (interaction of reputational effects with ideas of sovereignty and creditor structures). See Lienau, Odette, “The Longer-Term Consequences of Sovereign Debt Restructuring,” in Sovereign Debt Management, Buchheit, Lee and Lastra, Rosa (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2014). 15-12541