Skip to content

LPE Blog
Symposium

The Insurance Industry Is Not the Victim

By

The rapidly worsening home insurance crisis is often understood as primarily a problem for insurers. Yet the overarching policy question should not be, “how do we save the home insurance industry from collapsing?” but rather, “what role should insurance markets play in the broader suite of policies to keep people safely housed?”
Essay

Meddling with International Relations

By

Boycotts and international sanctions both represent alternative means of lawmaking that challenge the liberal legal order. But while the disruptive potential of boycotts has largely been contained, international sanctions have evaded the constraints of international law. By looking to the social-movement roots of international sanctions, we might be able. . .
Essay

Weekly Roundup: June 29

By

Ntina Tzouvala on Genocide and Political Economy at the ICJ, Chloe Thurston and Emily Zackin on the long history of American debtor politics, and James Kilgore, Emmett Sanders, and Kate Weisburd on the many myths of electronic monitoring. Plus, Amy Kapczynski reviews Mehrsa Baradaran’s new book, Noah Zatz discusses the court order enjoining the UC. . .
Essay

Can Personal Debt Mobilize Voters?

By ,

While recent conventional wisdom has held that it is futile to organize voters around debt relief, a longer view reveals that there is nothing inevitable about the lack of debtor mobilization. Through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, debtors repeatedly demanded protection in times of economic distress — a history that contains important lessons. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: June 21

By

Tal Rothstein on collective organizing at the law reviews, and Scott Cummings on the role of lawyers in democratic backsliding. Plus, upcoming LPE events on mobilizing against the courts and the political economy of genocide, a new open-access book on radically legal politics, a piece on the history of racist plunder through local tax codes, and a forum. . .
Essay

When Lawyers Attack the Rule of Law

By

While scholars have recently highlighted the role of law in democratic backsliding, they have largely ignored the actors who wield this tool: lawyers. Yet as the guardians of the legal legitimacy upon which autocratic legalism depends, the profession is a critical arena of democratic struggle that merits special attention.
Essay

Workers of the Law Reviews, Unite!

By

The uncompensated work that law students perform to run the field’s journals is best understood as part of an economy of prestige: an opportunity to burnish one’s resume in hopes of landing a lucrative or high-status job after graduation. Among other problems with this arrangement, it leaves American legal scholarship vulnerable to repression. Recently,. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: June 14

By

Ethan Ris on why you should ignore the Ivy League, Greta Krippner on the puzzling persistence of gender discrimination in insurance markets, and Grace Li on the role of associative life in prisons. Plus, the final session in our series on What To Do About the Courts, a cool job at the Roosevelt Institute, a new series on Twail and economic sanctions, a. . .
Essay

A Hidden Source of Labor Extraction in Prisons

By

Formal and informal associations in prisons are vital providers of food, financial support, physical security, education, news, legal representation, and more. The volume and scope of associations in prisons lay bare the diversity and extremity of needs that the state fails to meet, while also suggesting shortcomings with a patchwork approach by civil society. . .
Symposium

The Colleges are Alright

By

Despite the outsized attention they receive, “Ivy Plus” schools are ultimately a footnote in the larger story of higher education. The American system, while stratified, developed in such a way that stratification does not forestall opportunity. To understand this situation, we need to look back at a (failed) crusade to restrict access to college.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: June 7

By

Maryam Jamshidi on the securitization of the university, and Sarena Martinez on the quasi-sovereign power of insurers. Plus, a handful of must-attend LSA panels and events (including our happy hour!), a new report by Sabeel Rahman on State Capacity, Tim Wu and Lev Menand on the FTC’s non-compete ban, the first LPE NYC happy hour of the summer, an. . .
Symposium

Facing the Quasi-Sovereignty of Insurers

By

Insurers are quasi-sovereign actors that can determine the price and terms of economic inclusion. State insurance commissioners have little leverage over insurers that threaten to withdraw coverage when faced with unfavorable regulations. The story of Prop 103 in California suggests that popular mobilization might serve as a counterweight to insurers’ power.. . .

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