Law and Political Economy Blog - LPE Project - Page 4

Essay

Racial Capitalism and the Assault on Federal Workers

By Marissa Jackson Sow

By purging African Americans from the federal workforce, the Trump administration does not merely aim to undermine racial integration; rather, it seeks to bring about the economic immiseration of Black communities, thereby ensuring the entrenchment of a Black American underclass.

Symposium

The “Gender Identity Industry” & Other Conspiracies

By Joanna Wuest

The Manhattan Institute’s obsessive focus on trans medicine is a part of its broader effort to erode public trust in medical professionals and federal health authorities.

Announcement

Statement from the Faculty Director of the LPE Project

By Amy Kapczynski

Last week, Yale University fired Helyeh Doutaghi, from her position as the Deputy Director of the LPE Project. Yale was Helyeh’s employer (and is mine). I was not privy to their negotiations. Her termination was not my decision, and I opposed it. I have known Helyeh as a principled and proud young scholar, far from…

Essay

Why Labor Can Defeat Trumpism

By Eric Blanc

Despite discouraging federal policy developments, unions remain well-positioned to protect workers and beat back Trumpism.

Essay

Trump’s Strategy to Undermine Court Rulings and the Rule of Law

By Maya Sen

Trump’s recent attacks on the judiciary are best understood as an effort to lay the groundwork for a gradual shift in public opinion — to normalize the idea that defying court orders is not only acceptable but maybe even expected among his base.

Symposium

The Political Economy of Trans Healthcare Bans

By Kate Redburn, A.D. Sean Lewis

Much as Reagan invoked the welfare queen as a diversion to absorb public outcry against devastating cuts to the social safety net, Trump today offers trans people – with their supposedly abundant, easily accessible healthcare – as scapegoats to justify a broader conservative health policy agenda.

Essay

The New Carceral Public Health Law

By Benjamin A. Barsky, Rick Weinmeyer

According to recent judicial decisions, the state can criminalize homelessness, ban abortion, and restrict gender-affirming care, all in the name of public health, yet it cannot mandate vaccines nor pause evictions. How should we understand this asymmetry, and how might we realign public health jurisprudence with the pursuit of equality?

Essay

How to Use Endowments to Protect University Missions

By Allison Tait

If endowments are fundamentally creatures of restriction, they are also in smaller measure creatures of interpretation and discretion. Universities should use what flexibility they do have to stand up for their programs, employees, and students – for the core constituents in a mission-driven environment – in this time of unprecedented assault.

Essay

You’re Paying Big Tech’s Power Bill

By Eliza Martin

By exploiting their monopolies and control over rate-setting processes, utility companies are shifting the costs of Big Tech’s voracious energy consumption onto an unwitting public.

Essay

Why Local Officials Need to Embrace a Movement-Centric Ethos

By Arti Walker-Peddakotla

In attempting to fill the policy voids created by recent federal retreat, local governments face a significant constraint: the increasing use of state and federal preemption. To confront this challenge, local elected officials and municipal attorneys need to adopt a movement-oriented approach to governing and municipal law.

Announcement

Statement on Recent Events

By Aslı Ü. Bâli, Corinne Blalock, Veena Dubal, Amy Kapczynski, Samuel Moyn, Aziz Rana, Brishen Rogers, Noah Zatz

The online targeting and harassment of the LPE Project’s Deputy Director, Helyeh Doutaghi, is part of a broader environment of speech repression, particularly of anti-war and pro-Palestinian views.

Essay

Courts Are Useful, but We Cannot Depend on Them to Save Democracy

By Nikolas Bowie

Federal courts have an important role to play in enforcing laws against powerful figures who defy them. But the options available to federal courts are simultaneously too limited, weak, and dangerous for us to rely on them to the exclusion of everything else.

Essay

The Anti-Democratic Legal Form of the University (and How To Fix It)

By Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn

Given the anti-democratic corporate form of all private and many public universities, appeals to “shared governance” cannot succeed in wresting power from the academy’s autocrats. Instead, American universities must be reincorporated in accordance with the principles of democratic republicanism.

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: Feb 28

By Editors

Six former members of the Biden Administration on a more progressive future, along with a collection of our most illuminating posts on administrative law and democratic governance. Plus, a call for recently accepted LPE-relevant articles, an upcoming event on Organizing Red States, a lecture by Sanjukta Paul on Economic Coordination and Competition in. . .

Symposium

From the Vault: LPE & Administrative Law

By Editors

A collection of our most illuminating posts on administrative law and democratic governance, featuring Sabeel Rahman, Karen Tani, Sophia Z. Lee, Kate Jackson, Daniel Walters, Blake Emerson, and more.

LPE Blog