The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project brings together a network of scholars, practitioners, and students working to develop innovative intellectual, pedagogical, and political interventions to advance the study of political economy and law. Our work is rooted in the insight that politics and the economy cannot be separated and that both are constructed in essential respects by law. We believe that developments over the last several decades in legal scholarship and policy helped to facilitate rising inequality and precarity, political alienation, the entrenchment of racial hierarchies and intersectional exploitation, and ecological and social catastrophe. We aim to help reverse these trends by supporting scholarly work that maps where we have gone wrong, and that develops ideas and proposals to democratize our political economy and build a more just, equal, and sustainable future.
LPE project
Learn
A variety of resources designed to help faculty and students learn more about LPE, including syllabi from LPE and LPE-related courses, primers on topics such as neoliberalism and legal realism, as well as videos from a number of events we have held over the last year.
Go to LearnEngage
Information about the amazing work being done by LPE student groups, as well as guidance on starting a student group on your own campus! A bureau of affiliated professors and practitioners designed to help faculty and students to bring LPE scholars to their campuses!
Go to EngageEvents
A compendium of upcoming (and past) events put on by the LPE Project, LPE student groups, and other organizations in the LPE ecosystem.
Go to Events
Have You Heard the Good News About Consumer Protection?
Recent years have witnessed a sea change in consumer protection, ushered in by a new generation of enforcers who reject many of the basic premises from the neoliberal era. They aim not merely to ensure that consumers have the information necessary to discipline firms through choice, but to prevent businesses from using their power to shape markets in ways that take advantage of consumers.
Seven Perspectives on International Law and Palestinian Liberation
Rabea Eghbariah, Noura Erakat, Alaa Hajyahia, Darryl Li, Aslı Bâli, Diala Shamas, Maha Abdallah, and Shahd Hammouri share their thoughts on how international law hinders Palestinian liberation, and how might it be used—or how must it transform—to contribute to it.
Weekly Roundup: Oct. 25
Zohra Ahmed on the role that criminal fines and fees play in financing the state, Miguel Ruiz on the role of law and social movements in the fight against Spain's chronic housing crisis, and Matthew Glover and Joshua Ingram on fascism from an Afrikan perspective. Plus, a call for (your!) recently accepted LPE scholarship, an internship with the Movement Law Lab, a workshop on the LPE of Social Reproduction, new articles by Nicole Summers and Alyssa Battistoni, an analysis of Trump's likely judicial appointments, and a look at the new lobbying industry spawned by economic sanctions.
On Fascism: An Afrikan Perspective
While current analyses of fascism tend to focus on interwar Europe, for George Jackson and other political prisoners, fascism represented the general tendency of the capitalist class to destroy revolutionary consciousness wherever it threatened the established economic order. On this view, rather than being a twentieth-century ideology, fascism was already present in the practices of colonialism and enslavement.