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Essay

The Public Reliance on Private Toilets

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When most people consider the crisis of American infrastructure, they imagine crumbling roads and bridges, decrepit schools and hospitals, or dysfunctional railways and power grids. This post calls attention to a different, often overlooked component of American infrastructure — public restrooms. Specifically, it argues for a constitutional right to. . .
Symposium

Capitalism & Disability as Research Agenda

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The late Marta Russell is not a well-known figure among legal scholars and practitioners. She should be. Running throughout her writings is a powerful thesis: in many respects, law works to enable profit-seeking, and disability, as a concept, is crucial to that work.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 30, 2022

By LPE Editors

Ruth Dukes and Wolfgang Streeck on labour law & political economy, Sydney Forde on the economic basis of journalistic “objectivity,” and William Novak on the rise of the modern American administrative. Plus, upcoming events with Sara Nelson, Tim Wu, Sanjukta Paul, and more!
Essay

The Political Economy of Journalistic Objectivity

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Often lauded as the cornerstone of American journalism, the ideal of journalistic objectivity enshrined in corporate newsrooms primarily serves the bottom line, rather than an informed public. Fixing the industry’s misguided attachment to neutrality thus requires addressing its driving force: the economic incentives of news organizations.
Essay

Labour Law and Political Economy

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As a field of law, labour law draws it legitimacy from its capacity to impose a stable order on a conflictual relationship of power and exploitation, and to institutionalize such order as one of justice between classes. Because of this function, labour law is and must be open to contestation and change by those affected by it, responsive to pressures not. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 23, 2022

By LPE Editors

Luke Herrine discusses student debt cancellation and the politics of legal interpretation, Lisa Heinzerling reflects on the persistence of the economic style in regulatory policy, and Erik Peinert argues that the economic style has provided cover for fundamentally reactionary arguments. Plus, a forthcoming event with Sara Nelson & Amy Kapczynski!
Symposium

The Economics of Reaction

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The economic style of thinking has undeniably constrained progressive ambitions. Yet this framing overlooks a secondary role that the economic style plays in political life: it provides cover for explicitly conservative and reactionary arguments by cloaking them in seemingly apolitical, technical expertise.
Symposium

Thinking like a President

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For fifty years, presidents of both parties have offered a vision of regulatory policy that takes the economic style of reasoning as its North Star. Republican and Democratic presidents have differed, however, in their willingness to sacrifice economic purity when it disrupts their larger policy agendas. While Republican administrations have tended to. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 16, 2022

By LPE Editors

Frank Pasquale considers what could replace the “economic style,” Landon Storrs tells the darker history behind the rise of the “economic style,” and Alvin Velazquez explains why the NLRB needs to adopt a more protective joint employer standard. Plus, an LPE event on torts you won’t want to miss!
Symposium

The ‘Economic Style’ as Red Scare Legacy

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The rise of the “economic style of reasoning” in the 1960s cannot be properly understood without attending to the political fallout of earlier decades. Institutional economists and social Keynesians did not just fall out of academic fashion or become irrelevant to the problems at hand. Instead, many were forced out of government or toward the political center. . .
Symposium

What Could Replace the Economic Style?

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The simple supply and demand curves that today’s policymakers learned in Ec 10 in the 1990s are guiding the highest levels of policymaking in various agencies and Congressional offices today. Given this troubling reality, should we seek to reform the economic style, so that it more accurately reflects the true benefits of government action, or should we. . .

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