LPE Originals

The Academy and the (Undoing of) the Carceral State

This letter seeks to acknowledge how legal academia facilitates mass incarceration. Law professors must do more than teach the blackletter law, and we ask scholars for a commitment to situate their teaching of criminal law within the larger history and current context.

LPE Originals

Don’t Reform Policing, Transform It

There is a distressing disconnect between the ringing demands for justice on the streets and the suite of “police reform” proposals that many experts say satisfy these demands.

LPE Originals

The Institutional Design of Community Control

As the COVID19 pandemic and economic crises continue to ravage the country, it is increasingly clear that the virus is not just a public health challenge: it is also exposing deep systemic failures of governance, and disparities of political power. Black and brown Americans are the most likely to die from this virus, a reflection…

LPE Originals

What Comes After Money Bail? An LPE Perspective on Pretrial Detention

This is the first post in our series on Money Bail. Click here to read all posts in the series.  It is no longer controversial to say that our current system of money bail is flawed. When more than 400,000 people are incarcerated pretrial at any one time—a majority there because they cannot afford the amount…

LPE Originals

Movement Visions for a Renewed Left Legalism

This post is part of an ongoing series on LPE & Social Movements. In this moment of crisis for the rule of law, a number of thinkers on the left have prescribed new strategies for progressives to shift reigning ideas about constitutionalism and the law. Jedediah Purdy, for example, has argued that part of the…

LPE Originals

Movement Visions for a Renewed Left Politics

This post opens a series on LPE & Social Movements. When members of the Sunrise Movement confronted Senator Dianne Feinstein ten days ago, they demonstrated the renewed vitality of an old force in democratic politics: organized young people bringing bold new visions to complex social problems. In the video, we see the power of movement…