Over the past decade, LPE has become a broad community of scholars, students, and practitioners with a shared focus on law’s relationship to political and economic power. The LPE Blog has been a center for our intellectual community, while the LPE Project—founded in 2017 with the help of foundation funding—was a key institutional home. Last year, a group of scholars, with the support of the LPE Project and other parts of the LPE ecosystem, founded a new membership organization, the Association of Law and Political Economy (ALPE). Our goal was to develop a member-led organization and 501(c)(3) that could serve as a base for LPE work going forward.
We wanted ALPE to be incorporated outside of any university for two reasons. First, the LPE network and movement spans a wide range of fields, methodologies, and geographies, and therefore needs an institutional home that is not linked to any particular university. Second, in this era of mounting threats to higher education, foundation funding, and civil society, we felt it was essential for LPE work to have an independent and member-led institutional base. After our inaugural conference this past February, ALPE members elected our first Board of Directors this summer, who in turn selected Co-Chairs and an Executive Committee. Since then, that leadership team has been building out ALPE as an organization.
In that process, we have identified several core goals and values for our work. First, we want to support and foster LPE scholarship across the many fields, methodologies, and strategic orientations that are now part of the LPE ecosystem. In other words, we want to support scholarship that shares certain commitments and interests that characterize LPE: Scholarship that articulates law’s role in political and economic power, shows the interrelationship of politics and the economy, and uses the law affirmatively to build a more democratic, inclusive, and sustainable future. To that end, in addition to fostering scholarship, we want ALPE to support members’ collaborations with organizers and movement lawyers, and to support aligned policy development projects.
Second, we want ALPE to be a broad, open and welcoming community, a place for all students, scholars, and practitioners who share those values and goals. In particular, we want ALPE to be diverse and inclusive along lines of race, gender, sexuality, class, disability status, and national origin. We want ALPE to be open to participants across the country and from all universities. And we want ALPE to be member-led and member-driven, and to become economically self-sufficient rather than dependent on foundations or wealthy donors.
With those values and goals in mind, we have some specific updates on our plans for the academic year.
First, as you hopefully saw, we’ve posted the CFP for our next conference, which will be held in Boston on June 9-10, 2027. Our first conference, held in Richmond, VA in February 2026, had over 500 attendees, including legal scholars, graduate and law students, practitioners, and elected officials. Proposals for our June 2027 conference are due on December 9th, and we encourage (but do not require) panel and roundtable proposals.
Second, we will be announcing various streams of programming for ALPE members soon. Those will include a short conference where scholars, practitioners, and organizers can come together for focused collaboration; a one-day junior faculty forum for pre-tenure LPE scholars to receive feedback from senior scholars and peers; dedicated funding streams for member-organized workshops and convenings; and ongoing efforts to support LPE scholars on the academic job market. We are also establishing our process for ALPE members to establish working groups and chapters, so ALPE members can organize and collaborate on an ongoing basis.
Here’s what you can do now: Join as a member, if you have not already! Then, please get involved! We’ve set up our budget and governance structure to foster member-led initiatives, and are now recruiting ALPE members to serve on major committees. If you are interested in doing so, or working on any other efforts, please email us at info@lawandpoliticaleconomy.org.
We have listed the members of the Executive Committee below, along with the major committees they are chairing. To reach us, email us at info@lawandpoliticaleconomy.org.
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Our Executive Committee for the 2026-27 academic year is:
Zohra Ahmed, ALPE Co-Chair and Chair of 2027 Conference Committee
Brishen Rogers, ALPE Co-Chair
Raul Carillo, Chair of Emerging Scholars Program
Hiba Hafiz, Chair of Bylaws & Elections Committee
Jason Jackson, Co-Chair of Membership Committee
Luke Norris, Co-Chair of Membership Committee
Lenore Palladino, Treasurer and Chair of Budget Committee
Sabeel Rahman, Chair of Policy Committee
