Skip to content

LPE Blog

Politics, Culture, and Capitalism
Politics, Culture, and Capitalism
Featured

A Social Theory of Law in Capitalism

By

Understanding law’s role in producing the imperatives of capitalism and the relative power of those who occupy different roles in production allows us to identify reforms capable of transforming the structure of those relations.

American Kafala

By

When seen through the prism of the kafala system, it appears that the Trump administration seeks to consolidate and formalize the most extractive features of the U.S. migration regime.

Recent
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: Sept. 18

By

Yochai Benkler on the dynamics of capitalism and law’s role within it, Matthew Dimick on capital and law as social forms, and Matthew Lawrence on administrative law after transsubstantivity. Plus, new books by Nikolas Bowie, Daphna Renan, and Allison Tait, a symposium on the global political economy of artificial intelligence, an upcoming event on. . .
Essay

Doing Applied Administrative Law

By

Administrative law is often described as “transsubstantive”: in understanding, evaluating, and articulating the rules governing federal agency action across public health, environmental regulation, national security, and sundry other domains, law schools and legal scholarship treat administration as a single enterprise. What would it take to move beyond. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: Sept. 11

By

Sameer Ashar on the potential transformation of the U.S. immigration system, Luke Herrine on the history of multilevel marketing and right-wing movement building, and a CFP for the second annual ALPE conference. Plus, a collaborative research project for law students interested in the transition from capitalism to socialism, a new book by Sabeel Rahman, two. . .
Announcement

Off with the Lotus Eaters

By

Before the Blog goes on its annual August hiatus, we count down the ten most read posts of 2026 so far, say a fond farewell to our departing student editors, and welcome three new additions to the team.
Interview

What Rolls Downhill

By

Recent calls for mandatory retirement in academia are a reminder that class and other social hierarchies are something like mountains with increasingly dense fog toward their peaks: the higher up one is, the less one understands that upon which and above which one stands.
Essay

Cradle to the Grave

By

As Sam Moyn has recently argued, “class reductionism” fails to explain differentiation along the generational gradient — a pattern clearly visible in economics, politics, and ideology. Yet a clear picture of how age mediates class would reveal not gerontocracy, but capitalism and the fractionated class system it produces.

LPE Masthead

Managing Editor James Brandt Editoral Board Zohra Ahmed Corinne Blalock Veena Dubal Luke Herrine Amy Kapczynski Aziz Rana Kate Redburn Ntina Tzouvala Lisa Washington Noah Zatz Student Editors Liz Brown Edie Conekin-Tooze Eve Zelickson
Student Editor Emeriti Sam Aber Ashraf Ahmed Will Bloom Adam H. Bradlow Matthew Buck Brett Davidson Isabel Echarte Tariq El-Gabalawy Berto Elysee Molly Gordon Jeff Gordon Ruthie Lazenby Talya Lockman-Fine Chloe Miller Andrew Miller Roxana Moussavian Lydia Nicholson Ure Obioma