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Weekly Roundup

A Very Special Weekly Roundup: Meet the New Editorial Team

By LPE Editors

Despite several previous attempts, weekly roundups have never exactly been a weekly phenomenon here at the LPE Blog. Like New Year’s resolutions to exercise regularly, we keep starting out with good intentions and an initial consistency in fulfilling them, only to find ourselves staring at a pile of un-rounded-up weeks wondering what happened. But. . .
Symposium

We Cannot Prosecute Our Way to Making Black Lives Matter

By

Cities across the country are in turmoil after the cold-blooded killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. While the protests are motivated by and calling for a range of solutions to the ongoing problem of police brutality, the loudest call is for accountability in the form of criminal charges against the officers involved in Floyd’s death.. . .
Symposium

The Many Forms of Police Violence

By

Over the past week, there has been unprecedented acknowledgment of the physical violence that Black people in America have faced, for generations, at the hands of police. While this is an important development, the work to eradicate police violence will not be complete if the public remains concerned only with the most visually and viscerally jarring forms. . .
Essay

The Hidden Shortages of the Market Economy

By

If you think shortages—in goods like toilet paper, meat, and masks—came in with the pandemic, think again. Shortages are periods during which demand exceeds supply, and they’re an inescapable feature of all markets, all the time. When an investor bids up the price of Apple stock because none is available at current prices, that’s a…
Essay

The Economics of Shortages

By

The price of food increased 2.6% in April, the largest single-month increase since 1974, but food industry executives are insisting that the country has enough food. So why are prices going up? The explanation provided by the industry is that consumers are buying more than they need, creating shortages. But a shortage is not a…
Announcement

Signing Off

By

Dear Readers, When Amy Kapczynski introduces law and political economy, she often begins by describing a paradigmatic law student who arrives ready to fight injustice and is quickly sucked into an alienating vortex of efficiency-seeking and cost-benefit analyses. I was that student when I started law school, and by chance stumbled into the nascent LPE…. . .
Announcement

Join LPE at LSA (virtually)!

By LPE Editors

The Law and Society Association is holding its massive annual meeting online this year, and Law and Political Economy scholars will be there! The meeting takes place beginning this Thursday, May 28. Here is the link to the LSA conference page, where you can access sessions (LSA has said that only registered attendees may do…
Essay

Historicizing Consumer Protection

By

Learned Hand once described the task of the Federal Trade Commission as “discover[ing] and mak[ing] explicit those unexpressed standards of fair dealing which the conscience of the community may progressively develop.” In a previous post, I argued that moving consumer protection law beyond consumer sovereignty requires recovering this way of thinking, common. . .

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
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 Andrew Miller Roxana Moussavian Lydia Nicholson