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
Why Public Ownership?
Calls for public ownership often highlight the downsides of private ownership: how capitalist firms prioritize profit over providing quality services at fair prices. But what, specifically, do we value in its public counterpart? While Sandeep Vaheesan defends public ownership in the power sector primarily on democratic grounds, the left should emphasize its potential to address key obstacles to rapid decarbonization.
Democratic Abundance
What can the history of publicly-governed electrical utilities in the twentieth century teach us about today’s struggle for an accountable power sector? Sandeep Vaheesan kicks of a symposium on his new book, Democracy in Power, by tracing the history of electrification during the New Deal and offering a blueprint for a publicly-led path to decarbonization.
Housing Justice and the Administrative State After Chevron
Recent Supreme Court decisions threaten to undermine administrative efforts to achieve housing justice, including the mandate to affirmatively further fair housing and a loan program that provides affordable rural rental housing to disadvantaged families.
Agencies Outflanked
Four Supreme Court decisions concerning the power of the administrative state have left agencies increasingly vulnerable to attack. Each decision is significant on its own, but together they underscore the precarious position of agency action today.