Sovereign debt restructuring is an active area of law and public policy that regularly attracts criticism: Transactions are criticized, commercial creditors are criticized, the International Monetary Fund (“IMF”) is criticized, and the law is criticized. New policy prescriptions to fix ‘the problem of sovereign debt’ abound. Yet, we argue in this Paper that the prevailing contract-based system of sovereign debt restructuring (the “contractual approach”) works well in practice, is rooted in robust foundational principles, accommodates the unique characteristics of sovereign debt, and is superior to presently proposed alternatives. […]