Eight years ago, the LPE Blog was created with a simple goal: to put political economy back on the agenda in law schools. The blog, and the LPE Project that grew out of it, was an attempt to intervene in the crises of the moment in a way that was alive to the interconnections between political and economic power, and the dangers of the reification of markets. It allowed law professors to connect to one another, and to theorists and thinkers and activists outside of law schools, to bring new kinds of questions and scholarship into being.
Since that time, things have if anything become more dire. Taking a page from the autocratic playbook, the Administration has also placed institutions of higher education and the legal profession in the crosshairs, in an attempt to suppress critical inquiry and operate outside of conventional legal boundaries. Against this landscape, the work of LPE scholars, activists, organizers, and practitioners has never been more important. We need to build on the many successful LPE initiatives in recent years, and to make our intellectual frameworks and community stronger as the world around us becomes more hostile.
So, it’s a good moment to announce the new “Association of Law and Political Economy (ALPE),” a new, membership-based organization that we hope will serve as a home for a broad array of member-led LPE work. In many ways ALPE is a natural progression of our community’s growth. The LPE Project has always been run by a tiny team, and its existence has depended upon on a small amount of foundation funding – clearly a hard model to sustain, let alone scale up. The recent assault on universities and left-wing nonprofits has brought this issue into sharp relief, yet the need for a broader, more robust organization is something that we started to discuss more than a year ago. With many of you, we spent months dreaming up what LPE 2.0 might look like. A few things were clear: It shouldn’t be dependent on foundations or on any one funder. It would have members, who would help set the ambition and direction of the organization, contributing ideas and labor. To be sustainable, that labor would have to be shared. We’d want elected leadership, to make the organization more democratic than many non-profits. And today especially, we’d want a separate 501(c)(3), incorporated outside of a university.
As a result of these conversations, we formed an organizing committee of sixteen scholars—supported by a much larger advisory committee, with participants from across the LPE ecosystem—to try to bring this organization into being. Together, we have begun to construct a membership-based organization dedicated to the production of scholarly knowledge in the LPE field by academics, researchers, organizers, practitioners, and others. Anchored around a large annual conference, we hope the organization can spin off various conversations, sections, and gatherings each year.
Today, we are incorporated as a non-profit organization, have draft bylaws, an interim board, an executive committee, and a growing membership. A key focal point has been an annual conference – where we can gather to share ideas, dream up new initiatives, and build the organization together. Our first annual conference — with over 300 emerging and established scholars! — will be in Richmond, VA on February 6-7, 2026. It will have dozens of panels, some plenaries, and organizing sessions, as well as an introduction to ALPE where we can talk about the future (see the agenda, just posted here!).
The idea here is an organization that is independent and member-led. This post, then, is an official birth announcement, but also an invitation to collective conversations together about what ALPE can do, what it should be, and what role in can play in advancing knowledge, fostering solidarity, and building strength in these perilous times. We hope that you will join us not only at the conference, but also in envisioning and building together an association that can endure and do meaningful work for time to come.
So, here’s where you come in: Join as a member, here! Scholars, researchers, organizers, and practitioners interested in law and political economy can join as members now, which will make you eligible to vote in our first elections in May or June. (And students, stay tuned – we are working on a process for student membership and representation and will solicit student membership soon!) If you’d like to attend the conference, you can register here – but do it now, because registration closes on Wednesday, December 10. (The registration fee both funds the conference and helps sustain the organization – but we’ve managed to make student registration free, and we’ve used some of our funds to help defray the costs for every scholar who needed assistance.). And if you have ideas for ALPE or might want to run for the board or executive committee, reach out to any of us. Looking forward to building together, friends!
