Skip to content

Law & Political Economy

LPE project

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.

About The LPE Project Read the LPE Blog
Our Work

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 Learn

Engage

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 Engage

Events

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
Recent Updates
Sticking Together in Tough Times with Dean Spade 
event

Sticking Together in Tough Times with Dean Spade 

Please join the LPE Project on Thursday, January 30th, from 12:10 to 1:30 PM ET, for a lunch talk with Dean Spade titled Sticking Together in Tough Times. Dean Spade is a Professor at Seattle University School of Law, where he teaches courses in Administrative Law, Poverty Law, Gender and Law, Policing and Imprisonment, Professional…

event

Systemic Justice Project Conference: Facing the Future: Organizing and Lawyering for...

The Systemic Justice Project’s 2025 conference (Jan 31 – Feb 2) will bring together justice-oriented law students, lawyers, organizers, and scholars and will focus on the future of justice-oriented lawyering in the face of mounting systemic challenges and rising authoritarianism. The LPE Project is thrilled to be cosponsoring the conference alongside the People’s Parity Project.…

article

Weekly Roundup: Jan 17

Amy Kapczynski on institutional neutrality rules, and Greg Baltz on tenant union organizing in the shadow of law. Plus, a changing of the guard on the LPE editorial board, a CFP on Carceral Political Economy, a lunch talk with Dean Spade, two political-economy focused post-doc positions, Jasmine Harris on conservatorships, Jonathan Harris on the FTC's non-compete rule, Karen Tani on Digging a Hole, a debate over the YIMBY agenda, Amna Akbar on Mangione and Malm, Beth Popp Berman on antitrust and industrial policy, and the Michigan Journal of Law and Society is looking for interdisciplinary scholarship.