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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.

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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!

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Events

A compendium of upcoming (and past) events put on by the LPE Project, LPE student groups, and other organizations in the LPE ecosystem.

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Recent Updates
Weekly Roundup: Oct. 11
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Weekly Roundup: Oct. 11

Greg Baltz on Abolish Rent, Chaumtoli Huq on the student uprising in Bangladesh, and Etienne Toussaint on Afrofuturist legal critique. Plus, an upcoming event on Sandeep Vaheesan's Democracy in Power, an interview with Brian Highsmith on company towns old and new, a bombshell in Colorado's Kroger-Albertsons merger trial, a new online reading group on Labor & Colonialism in Palestine, an investigation into how Uber and Lyft circumvent NYC's minimum wage law, and two timely pieces on the crypto industry's undue influence on our elections.

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Octavia Butler and Afrofuturist Legal Critique

Butler’s speculative fiction uses the freedom dreams of Black Americans to show how the structure of a political economy not only reflects but also shapes legal concepts. By challenging the perceived permanence of existing power structures, Afrofuturism creates space for envisioning new, emancipatory futures.