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 14
Vanessa Williamson on oligarchy and taxation, and Elle Rothermich on the commodification of hospice care. Plus, Kate Redburn on Skrmetti, LPE Night School on municipal power, Claire Kelloway on public grocery projects, Cassie Powell on private equity's move into mobile home parks, Jacob Udell and Routhy Gourevitch on the multifamily rental market, Martijn Konings on MAGA and the Federal Reserve, and new books by Jason Jackson, Anna Law, and Timothy Kaufman-Osborn.
Hospice Commodification and the Limits of Antitrust
As hospice care is increasingly dominated by private equity firms, an antitrust response, while necessary, has the potential to normalize the language of the market as the default mode for discussing healthcare reform. Hospice demonstrates what is lost when healthcare is described as a mere economic exchange, and Medicare’s per diem hospice benefit harbors as-yet-unrealized potential for decommodification.
The Long Anti-Tax Tradition of American Oligarchy
Throughout U.S. history, oligarchs have fettered the tax power of the state to ensure that the government would be too feeble to rein in their power. The Trump Administration's capricious tariffs and mass firings at the Internal Revenue Service are the latest iteration of this long, anti-tax, anti-democratic tradition.
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.