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: March 6
Veena Dubal and Aziza Ahmed on how feminists transformed the law and science of AIDS, Luke Herrine on market governance in Trumpworld, and Aditya Balasubramanian on the misnomer of modern Indian capital. Plus, a new special issue on Law & Economics vs. Law & Political Economy, Shahrzad Shams and Todd N. Tucker make the progressive case for court reform, Sandeep Vaheesan reflects on how to build the electrostate, Amy Kapczynski proposes a right to education as a free speech remedy, and Ben Fong takes readers inside the belly of same-day delivery.
Modern(izing) Indian Capital?
Jason Jackson’s erudite Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry shows that, for more than a century, Indian firms labeled as “traditional” capital faced policy hostility, while those considered “modern” were more likely to receive favorable government treatment. Yet how should we understand the modernity of so-called “modern Indian capitalists”? Did Indian capital ever shed its identity as speculators and traders, or was this classification merely a way to block foreign competition?
Market Governance in Trumpworld
Over the past year, the much-touted right-wing embrace of anti-monopolism has been reduced to a distant memory. What has emerged instead is a personalist form of market governance, where regulatory authority persists only insofar as it serves the ambitions of political insiders.
How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS
Veena Dubal interviews Aziza Ahmed about the exclusion of women from early AIDS definitions, the feminist lawyers and activists who transformed the government's response to the epidemic, and the adverse public health consequences of carceral feminism.