As we promised in our post on Monday, below is a list of recommended readings—mostly, but not entirely, from the blog—that helped orient us to the critical and constructive moves of LPE. Our choices are highly partial and subjective, and there is a vast literature on the Blog and elsewhere that can help to orient the critically-minded law student. But this is a brief place to start.
Foundations of LPE
To start, here are some foundational readings that introduce the broad themes of Law and Political Economy:
- Law and Political Economy: Towards a Manifesto
- Lawyering and Political Economy
- Where is the Political Economy?
- For a deeper dive, see Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis, and Law and Political Economy in a Time of Accelerating Crises.
Some Fundamental Concepts
- Racial capitalism: For a primer on racial capitalism, we recommend this explainer by Robin D. G. Kelley and this post by Angela Harris on the relationship between race and LPE.
- Neoliberalism: For an overview of the (often slippery) concept, we recommend this post identifying four “neoliberal forms of argument,” as well as this primer, which includes an annotated bibliography of other sources. For a deeper dive into the relationship between law and neoliberalism, this article is essential.
- Social reproduction: On the relationship between LPE and feminist accounts social reproduction, we reommend this explainer post and this post on LPE and care work.
- Law and economics: This article contains a useful characterization of law and economics as it is usually approached in the 1L curriculum and suggests some of its flaws. This pair of blog posts helps explain why the focus on “maximizing” wealth obscures questions of equity and justice.
- Structural inequality: See this pair of blog posts on structural inequality and the law.
- Questioning the public-private distinction: We recommend some of the posts that appear in the following section on 1L classes, including this piece on contracts and this one on property.
Black-Letter Bread and Butter for 1Ls
- On Contracts:
- Noah Zatz, The Public Law of Private Promising
- Luke Herrine, Contextualizing Contract Law
- Sanjukta Paul, Labor Relationships and the Legal Vision of Contracts
- On Torts:
- Connor Dwyer Reynolds, Rules of Power and Wrongs: A Law and Political Economy Approach to Tort Law
- Conor Dwyer Reynolds, Torts: A Law and Political Economy CounterSyllabus
- Rebecca Crootoff, Accountability for the Internet of Torts
- Anita Bernstein, American Tort Law Tells Us How it Really Feels About Law and Economics
- On Civil Procedure:
- Daniel Wolf Townsend, LPE of Civil Procedure, Equality Inside and Outside the Courts
- Emily Villano, Mullane, Financialization, and Procedural Pliability
- Helen Hershkoff, Teaching Civil Procedure with Political Economy in Mind,
- On Property:
- Kali Murray, Teaching from Narrative in Property Law
- Ezra Rosser, The State As the Foundation of Property Law
- K-Sue Park on How She Teaches Property
- On Constitutional Law:
- Sabeel Rahman, Constitutional Law 101: A Primer for the Law and Political Economy Blog
- Symposium on Socialist Constitutionalism
- On Criminal Law:
- Angela P. Harris, Teaching Criminal Law from an LPE Perspective
- Jocelyn Simonson & Amna Akbar, Rethinking Criminal Law
A deeper look at the wide variety of topics covered on the LPE Blog can, of course, be found by searching the Blog or exploring its ever-growing collection of syllabi, primers, and videos.
If this work speaks to you, we would encourage you to get involved in LPE community at your school. Join your school’s LPE chapter, connect with faculty who have written for the blog (or who like our tweets!), start a reading group, or sign up for LPE Project events. Happy reading!
