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.

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.

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.