Skip to content

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.

Go to Learn

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!

Go to Engage

Events

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
Recent Updates
The Right Understands That All Governance Is Data Governance
article

The Right Understands That All Governance Is Data Governance

The tech arm of Trump 2.0 isn't just reshaping government — it's consolidating control over the data infrastructure that makes modern governance possible. By centralizing data flows and gutting public information systems, DOGE is building the machinery for a new era of authoritarianism.

article

Weekly Roundup: May 9

Nicholas Handler on the importance of federal labor unions and Ava Liu on Universal Basic Income and the politics of automation. Plus, last call for new spring scholarship, an upcoming event with Aziz Rana and Vijayashri Sripati, model legislation aimed at rising veterinary prices, and new pieces by Bernard Harcourt, Alex Hertel-Fernandez, and Alex Gourevitch.

article

Beyond Redistribution: Rethinking UBI and the Politics of Automation

Silicon Valley tech bosses often promote Universal Basic Income as a progressive solution to job losses caused by automation. However, by portraying such displacement as inevitable rather than socially determined, these proposals obscure the critical role that power structures and market dynamics play in shaping technological innovation. They also fail to address how automation further concentrates control over technology, production, and data.