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
What Does Critical Race Theory Teach Us About Non-Reformist Reforms?
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What Does Critical Race Theory Teach Us About Non-Reformist Reforms?

Critical Race Theorists have long been concerned with the dangers inherent to legal reform. Drawing on their insights, we should approach the struggle for non-reformist reforms not as a search for some self-evident formula, but as a practice that requires close and disciplined engagement with the social and economic conditions we seek to change.

Upon the Conviction of the Villain Sam Bankman-Fried
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Upon the Conviction of the Villain Sam Bankman-Fried

Earlier this month, Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. His conviction should not, however, be seen as any kind of victory. For the past three years, SBF successfully exploited a financial regulatory system stuck in older ways of thinking and increasingly incapable of averting illicit finance in the platform economy. To prevent such predation in the future, LPE scholars must help accelerate the turn to proactive planning, including via the day-to-day, direct supervision of major financial institutions.

event

SGEL Conference: Gender & Race in Law & Political Economy

The Sustainable Global Economic Law (SGEL) center at the University of Amsterdam is holding an interdisciplinary event on December 7th (9am CET/ 8am GMT) to explore how gender and race relate to law and political economy in comparative transnational contexts, centering on European perspectives and legacies. Speakers will address this overarching theme in connection to…

event

LPE NYC: Night School on the Law & Political Economy of...

‘Law and Political Economy of Housing’ is the second session of the New School’s LPE Night School. It is a conversation between Brian Highsmith (Harvard Law School) and Robert Robinson (Partners for Dignity and Rights), moderated by Raúl Carrillo (Columbia Law School), on the role of law in creating New York’s epic housing crisis and how it builds or undermines the opportunities…