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Symposium

Taking Social Relations as the Basic Unit of Analysis

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In capitalism, social relations of production exert outsized force on all other domains, distorting and warping relations of reproduction, protection, and meaning-making without fully annihilating their internal capacity to structure relations in their distinct domains. This approach to understanding society, in which social relations are taken as the. . .
Essay

The Time for Public Pharma is Now

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To make medicines more affordable, policymakers are increasingly turning to price controls and out-of-pocket caps. These measures, while lowering costs, leave decisions about which drugs to manufacture and distribute in private hands. If patients are to have reliable access to the medicines they need, the government must take on a more direct role in. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: Sept. 25

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Jed Purdy discusses law’s role in capitalism, while Megan Wachspress explores how the data center boom risks privatizing the power grid. Plus, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Gabe Winant on gerontocracy, Lev Menand and Lina Khan on jurisdiction stripping, Ron Knox on forgotten lessons about monopolies and fascism, Jed Purdy on Raymond Williams, Noura Erakat on. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: Sept. 18

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Yochai Benkler on the dynamics of capitalism and law’s role within it, Matthew Dimick on capital and law as social forms, and Matthew Lawrence on administrative law after transsubstantivity. Plus, new books by Nikolas Bowie, Daphna Renan, and Allison Tait, a symposium on the global political economy of artificial intelligence, an upcoming event on. . .
Essay

Doing Applied Administrative Law

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Administrative law is often described as “transsubstantive”: in understanding, evaluating, and articulating the rules governing federal agency action across public health, environmental regulation, national security, and sundry other domains, law schools and legal scholarship treat administration as a single enterprise. What would it take to move beyond. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: Sept. 11

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Sameer Ashar on the potential transformation of the U.S. immigration system, Luke Herrine on the history of multilevel marketing and right-wing movement building, and a CFP for the second annual ALPE conference. Plus, a collaborative research project for law students interested in the transition from capitalism to socialism, a new book by Sabeel Rahman, two. . .
Essay

American Kafala

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When seen through the prism of the kafala system, it appears that the Trump administration seeks to consolidate and formalize the most extractive features of the U.S. migration regime.
Announcement

Off with the Lotus Eaters

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Before the Blog goes on its annual August hiatus, we count down the ten most read posts of 2026 so far, say a fond farewell to our departing student editors, and welcome three new additions to the team.
Interview

What Rolls Downhill

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Recent calls for mandatory retirement in academia are a reminder that class and other social hierarchies are something like mountains with increasingly dense fog toward their peaks: the higher up one is, the less one understands that upon which and above which one stands.
Essay

Cradle to the Grave

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As Sam Moyn has recently argued, “class reductionism” fails to explain differentiation along the generational gradient — a pattern clearly visible in economics, politics, and ideology. Yet a clear picture of how age mediates class would reveal not gerontocracy, but capitalism and the fractionated class system it produces.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: July 24

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Madison Condon and Luke Herrine on the economics that Law & Economics ignores, Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Sarah Polcz on why we should tax AI equity, Matt Bodie on the persistence of shareholder primacy, and Diana Reddy on theorizing discrimination for the bad jobs economy. Plus, two PhD scholarships available at UNSW Law, a set of new papers from the. . .

LPE Masthead

Managing Editor James Brandt Editoral Board Zohra Ahmed Corinne Blalock Veena Dubal Luke Herrine Amy Kapczynski Aziz Rana Kate Redburn Ntina Tzouvala Lisa Washington Noah Zatz Student Editors Liz Brown Edie Conekin-Tooze Eve Zelickson
Student Editor Emeriti Sam Aber Ashraf Ahmed Will Bloom Adam H. Bradlow Matthew Buck Brett Davidson Isabel Echarte Tariq El-Gabalawy Berto Elysee Molly Gordon Jeff Gordon Ruthie Lazenby Talya Lockman-Fine Chloe Miller Andrew Miller Roxana Moussavian Lydia Nicholson Ure Obioma