Any program of transformative change must reckon with the fact that capitalists have largely succeeded in de-legitimizing existing institutions, including the state itself.

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.

How much autonomy does politics have from the prevailing economic order? And what role does culture play in shaping politics? Answers to these questions will help determine law’s potential role in advancing democratic efforts to shape the terms of common life.

Where do profits come from? And how does law legitimate capitalism? To make progress on these questions, we must dig deeper into the nature of capital and the idea of the legal form.

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.

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.