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LPE Blog

Law and Political Economy: A (Very) Brief Field Guide for 1Ls
Law and Political Economy: A (Very) Brief Field Guide for 1Ls
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What Do You Mean by Efficiency? An Opinionated Guide

To ask “but what do you mean by efficiency?” can make one appear unsophisticated or pedantic. But that’s precisely the question we should be asking. Because there are good reasons to reject the notions of “efficiency” usually taught in 1L classes, even if — in fact, precisely because — we have good reason to value other forms of efficiency.

Where is the Political Economy?

Embracing the terms “economy” and “political economy,” as LPE has done, risks invoking just the kind of separate, reified realm that we are trying to critique. In our view, defining “the economy,” and studying how legal institutions have done so, should be central issues that LPE scholarship aims to address.

Law & Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is an indispensable term for making sense of the legal, political, and ideological conflicts of the moment, and also one of the most maligned. Liberals who feel criticized by it have insisted so often and so loudly on its uselessness that even those on the left who use it often seem compelled to apologize…
Recent

What Rolls Downhill

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.

Cradle to the Grave

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.

Weekly Roundup: July 24

Madison Condon and Luke Herrine on the economics that Law & Economics ignores, Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Sarah Polcz on why we should tax AI equity, Matt Bodie on the persistence of shareholder primacy, and Diana Reddy on theorizing discrimination for the bad jobs economy. Plus, two PhD scholarships available at UNSW Law, a set of new papers from the. . .

Twilight of the Gods

Contemporary proponents of law and economics claim to have abandoned the idea that law is an instrument for maximizing economic efficiency and wealth. Corporate law scholars haven’t yet heard the good news.