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
Weekly Roundup: Nov 7
Matthew Dimick on antitrust and the logic of capitalism, and G.S. Hans on legal clinics under political attack. Plus, a cool new fellowship at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, Cea Weaver on the housing politics in New York City, the Debt Collective on the threat that municipal debt poses to Mamdani, Sam Moyn on making congress great again, Sandeep Dhaliwal on New Deal Law and Order, a new report on the weaponization of antisemitism claims, Bench Ansfield interviewed about their recent book Born in Flames, a political economic reading of the Supreme Court's tariff case, and Nicholas Mulder on why Trump is better at coercing allies than adversaries.
Clinics Under Fire: Defending Legal Education from Political Interference
While legal clinics have long been vulnerable to pressure from outside forces, recent attacks by the federal government represent an alarming new level of interference. Protecting clinical work now requires not only legal and institutional defenses, but collective preparation and solidarity across the profession.
Marx, Antitrust, and the Logic of Capital
Antitrust may promise to tame corporate power, but it leaves untouched the deeper logic of capitalism that compels production for profit's sake. In this sense, antitrust is not voluntarist enough, choosing to fight capital with one hand tied behind its back. At the same time, however, antitrust places too much faith in law as a source of normative authority and in an administrative state whose legitimacy is evaporating before our eyes.
Weekly Roundup: Oct 31
James Goodwin on the rise of OIRA 2.0, Noah Zatz and Jerry Kang on retaliation lawsuits against DEI purges, and Veryl Pow and Mohini Mookim on prefigurative lawyering. Plus, registration and membership for the Association of Law and Political Economy, Lina Khan's new substack, a new Roosevelt Report on effective governance, a measure of comeuppance for Big Law's betrayal of democracy, a symposium on John Witt's new book, and a new paper on bankruptcy law and unions.