In thinking about how to regulate AI as a public utility, there are two big questions: which layers of the AI stack warrant regulation, and which tools of public utility law are best suited to each layer?

To design the right program for capitalism’s legal transformation, we must begin with the right theory of capitalism.

If capitalism is a legal regime above all else, then legal reform is not only necessary but sufficient in order to achieve democratic self-governance, ecological sustainability, and equality. As the collapse of the WTO and the rise of China suggest, however, law alone does not decide who holds economic power.

When new constitutional orders came about in the 18th and 19th centuries, they left intact the private legal order that they inherited from feudalism, entrenching property rights and contracts as bulwarks against economic democracy. Reforming this system will require placing private law on a normative foundation that is compatible with democratic self-ordering.

Law and economics offers a portable, teachable procedure that students can learn in a semester and apply across fields. Should LPE aim to develop a rival procedure of its own, or should it aspire to a different kind of methodological maturity?

To protect customers from rising electricity prices, public officials are urging data center developers to supply their own power. But this approach risks privatizing the power grid, worsening the climate crisis, and eroding electricity’s status as a public good.