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LPE Blog

Can Wage Boards Work in America?

In recent years, labor activists have tried to summon one of labor’s legendary creatures — the wage board — to aid their cause. Unfortunately, reinvigorating tripartite institutions like wage boards is an uphill battle in the United States, given structural economic forces and institutional arrangements that constrain worker power. But two recent wage. . .

What to Watch: The Thirteen Best Panels Streaming This Weekend

Forget Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Over the next three days, you’ll want to turn that dial to Law and Political Economy: Labor, Social Control, and Counterpower. From the comfort of your own home, stream panels on the legal regulation of data and technology, socialist constitutionalism, decarcerating the welfare state, and so much more. Zoom links for. . .

How Free Trade Threatens Global Democracy

As we debate matters of near-shoring, friend-shoring, and globalization, we must not forget the lessons of the recent past: from Argentina to India, the pursuit of open economies involved a brutal crack down on labor union resistance. In the process, many governments unleashed dynamics that now threaten the survival of democracy itself. Hope, though, can. . .

What CLS Meant by the Indeterminacy Thesis

One the CLS movement’s most significant contributions was the theory of law’s inherent tendency towards indeterminacy. Yet, despite broad agreement about its importance, the thesis itself is frequently misunderstood. This confusion arises, in part, because CLS put forward two very different approaches to formulating the indeterminacy thesis. We. . .

Weekly Roundup: March 24, 2023

Judah Schept on the carceral conjuncture in Central Appalachia, Nicholas Stump on rural resistance to fossil capital, and Christine Desan, Lev Menand, Raúl Carrillo, Rohan Grey, Dan Rohde, and Hilary Allen on the Silicon Valley Bank debacle. Plus, new articles by Sanjukta Paul and Marshall Steinbaum, more on SVB from Saule Omarova, and a hot new law and. . .

The Carceral Conjuncture in Central Appalachia

As a result of jail and prison expansion in Eastern Kentucky, the region has become a center of gravity in the fight over the future of the carceral state. To understand this carceral boom, we need to appreciate how multiple crises have converged in Eastern Kentucky to produce a historical moment – a conjuncture – in which prisons and jails serve as. . .

Weekly Roundup: March 17, 2023

Darryl Li on the weaponization of terrorism torts, Emily Prifogle and Jessica Shoemaker on racial disparities in rural America, and Christopher Ali on the erasure of rural communities by the FCC. Plus, we’re asking you (yes you) to tell us about the hottest new LPE law review articles. In exchange, as always, we’ve gathered the best LPE-content from. . .

Putting Rural Communities on the (Broadband) Map

Broadband access in rural areas in the United States is not only a market failure, but a market disaster, as private providers have little interest in serving expensive, hard-to-reach places. In its most recent attempt to bridge the rural-urban digital divide, Congress allocated $42.5 billion for broadband deployment, the distribution of which is to be. . .

Terrorism Torts and the Right to Colonize

The D.C. Circuit appeals court heard arguments last month in a bizarre case: the Jewish National Fund is leading a lawsuit against the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a nation-wide coalition of groups advocating for Palestinian liberation, on accusations of supporting terrorism. A look at the political economy of terrorism tort litigation shows how. . .

Weekly Roundup: March 10, 2023

Ann Eisenberg kicks off a symposium on the LPE of Rural America, Ganesh Sitaraman, Morgan Ricks, and Christopher Serkin discuss regulation’s role in geographic inequality, and Elizabeth Sepper and James Nelson examine the political economy behind the rise of public yet religious hospitals. Plus, two (count’em two) new LPE-related fellowships, as. . .

The Merger of Government and Religion

An alliance between religious and economic conservatives is playing a central yet overlooked role in the resurgence of concentrated economic power in America, resulting in the transfer of public funds, services, and decision-making away from more democratic institutions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of “government-religious hospitals”: these. . .