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Essay

Climate Change and the Neoliberal Imagination

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Neoliberal welfare economics has constrained our moral and political imagination and, in so doing, limited our ability to realistically advance climate justice. This can be seen by considering two policy proposals that appear to fit comfortably within the standard climate economic paradigm, but that offer a wider scope of possibility than conventionally allowed.. . .
Symposium

Did CLS Have (Much Of) Any Theory?

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Sam Moyn’s recent call for a renewed interest in a radical theory of law is timely and welcome. However, if LPE wants a social and legal theory adequate to its ambitions, we cannot turn to the insights of the earlier CLS movement to develop it. This is because CLS, in the relevant respects, did not have (much of) any theory at all.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: October 13, 2023

By LPE Editors

Week in review: Amanda Parsons and Salomé Viljoen analyze the disconnect between social data and the law, while Luke Herrine offers law students a guided tour through the many meanings of efficiency. Plus, the first New Haven LPE Happy Hour, Rob Hunter responds to Sam Moyn, Sanjay Jolly discusses C. Edwin Baker, and Claire Kelloway and Maureen Tkacik debunk. . .
Essay

What Do You Mean by Efficiency? An Opinionated Guide

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To ask “but what do you mean by efficiency?” can make one appear unsophisticated or pedantic. But that’s precisely the question we should be asking. Because there are good reasons to reject the notions of “efficiency” usually taught in 1L classes, even if — in fact, precisely because — we have good reason to value other forms of efficiency.
Essay

Towards a Legal Understanding of Social Data

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There is, at present, a conceptual mismatch between the strategies of accumulation that are dominant in the digital economy and the basic assumptions that underlie the legal regimes tasked with regulating accumulation. To begin to address this discrepancy, legal actors in these regimes need a better understanding of how companies translate social data into. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: October 6, 2023

By LPE Editors

Sandeep Dhaliwal on the Eighth Amendment as a right to credit, Sanjukta Paul on the virtues of mid-level theorizing, and Sandeep Vaheesan and Andy Fitch on the treatise that has misled antitrust scholars for decades. Plus, two cool jobs, a CFP for ClassCrits, Amy Kapczynski, Reshma Ramachandran, and Christopher Morten on how not to do industrial policy, Kim. . .
Essay

In Defense of Theoretical Quietism

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Sam Moyn has recently challenged what he sees as the “theoretical quietism” of LPE. Yet this resistance to high-altitude legal and social theory is entirely justified. The most productive theorizing, which involves contesting and clarifying the mid-level legal and economic concepts that have the most effect in the world, will occur a step below these. . .
Essay

Cruel, But Not Unusual, Market Foundations

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Private equity firms, cloaked under protective securities laws, have increasingly acquired companies that provide goods and services in U.S. jails and prisons. But it is the legal construction of prisoners’ rights that has enabled this market to take the particular form that it has, turning community ties into steady payment streams. In particular, Eighth. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 29, 2023

By LPE Editors

Asher Morse on how labor agreements could Trump-proof federal agencies, Talia Rothstein on what the creation of law clinics left behind, and Veena Dubal and Renan Kalil on the push to export exploitative US labor laws to Brazil. Plus, a call (by us) for the best new LPE work, two amazing jobs for 3Ls or recent grads, a video of our event with Bernard Harcourt,. . .
Essay

What Law Clinics Left Behind

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Though a familiar feature of legal education today, law clinics have a complex history. In the 1960s and 1970s, when student activists demanded curricular reform, law schools embraced clinics as a way to defuse the threat of student power. Looking back at this largely forgotten history helps illuminate the demands that were left behind, and demonstrates the. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 22, 2023

By LPE Editors

Paul Gowder on democratizing big tech, Ntina Tzouvala on legal theory in the lowercase, and Yiran Zhang on the disciplinary bureaucracy of our home care system. Plus, LPE night school, a new paper by Sanjukta Paul, Ganesh Sitaraman on airline deregulation, a must-read symposium at Bill of Health, Jessica Whyte reviews Quinn Slobodian, and a forum on Solidarity.. . .
Essay

The Care Bureaucracy

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In response to an expanding need for at home care, the state has established a highly bureaucratic system for delivering and compensating such assistance. This rigid approach to valuing care, in which needs are fragmented into easily quantifiable units, imposes under-recognized yet significant costs on workers and recipients alike.

LPE Masthead

Managing Editor James Brandt Editoral Board Amna Akbar Corinne Blalock Veena Dubal Luke Herrine Amy Kapczynski Caroline Parker Aziz Rana Kate Redburn Karen Tani Noah Zatz Student Editors Liz Brown Chloe Miller Sohum Pal Elliot Setzer Eve Zelickson
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