LPE Blog

Symposium

Liberate the Meritocrats—From Their Bosses

By Andrew Hart, Marshall Steinbaum

Marshall Steinbaum and Andrew Hart argue that Professor Markovits’ The Meritocracy Trap omits capitalists from the story in part by relying too heavily on the flawed theory of human capital.

Essay

The Case for Universal Labor and Employment Rights

By Amanda Jaret, Sandeep Vaheesan

Taking up Anne Alstott & Ganesh Sitaraman’s arguments in favor of the public option, this post makes a case for universal labor and employment rights.

Essay

Enriching the Narrative Economics of Public Options

By Frank Pasquale

Inspired by Anne Alstott & Ganesh Sitaraman’s The Public Option, this post suggests that it is time to tell new stories about the nature and purpose of economic institutions, and that infrastructural investments should be put to work to ensure there is a world we can retire into.

Symposium

Promises All the Way Down: A Primer on the Money View

By Elham Saeidinezhad

This post explores the “money view,” which demystifies financial economies by conceptualizing money as the way in which humans manage ongoing promissory relations in a world of uncertainty.

Symposium

In Praise of Blindspots

By Suresh Naidu

Economic models produce blindspots, compressing qualitative differences into quantitative measures. Yet, this vice is also the source of their power.

Symposium

Tracking Extraction

By Angela P. Harris

If “law and political economy” examines the role of law in constituting and regulating marketcraft and statecraft, one way of “doing” LPE is to look for the role of law in managing the processes by which capitalists extract value from activity putatively outside “the economy.”

Symposium

The Constitutional Theory of the Business Enterprise: Toward a Monetary Theory of Production

By Jamee K. Moudud

Eschewing the chimerical twin poles of perfect competition and market failure, this post advances an LPE-grounded constitutional theory of the business enterprise, informed a Legal Realist reading of the economics literature.

Symposium

The Sociology of Markets: an Alternative Political Economy

By Neil Fligstein

The co-constitution of states and markets reflects the historical distribution of power in society. As social structures, markets are subject to the dynamics of all forms of organized social life.

Symposium

Privatizing Sovereignty, Socializing Property: What Economics Doesn’t Teach You About the Corporation

By David Ciepley

Despite mainstream economists’ fixation on relations among natural persons, ours is a world teeming with abstract legal entities—corporations—chartered by the public authority, managed by corporate fiduciaries. Such public-private hybrids illustrate the “political” in “political economy.”

Symposium

Stocking the Toolshed: A Symposium on Methods of Political Economy

By Luke Herrine

This post introduces a symposium on heterodox methodologies in the study of political economy.

Symposium

After Money Bail: Lifting the Veil on Pretrial Detention

By Sandra G. Mayson

Ending money bail will not itself produce justice because we have been using money bail, and the detention it produces, to meet a host of social needs. Forsaking it will require us to find better ways to meet them.

Announcement

LPE at RebLaw!

By LPE Editors

If you’re at (or on your way to) RebLaw, you should definitely go to the two events hosted by LPE student groups on Saturday! To wit, 10:15 a.m. in Room 129: “Reclaiming Our Legal Education: Alternatives By and For Progressive Law Students” (a panel featuring current law students and practitioners) 12:00 p.m. in Room 127:…

Symposium

Reading Bail Reform Through a Critical Race Lens

By Sean Allan Hill II

Critical race theory can supply a framework for interpreting bail reform, as it renders legible the carceral reproduction of racial hierarchies as well as the law’s normalization of anti-Black criminalization.

Symposium

Community Bail Funds as a Tool for Prison Abolition

By Brett Davidson, Elisabeth Epps, Sharyln Grace, Atara Rich-Shea

Four organizers with the National Bail Fund Network explore how community bail funds can serve as tools to advance abolitionist movement building.

LPE Masthead

Managing Editor James Brandt Editoral Board Zohra Ahmed Corinne Blalock Veena Dubal Luke Herrine Amy Kapczynski Aziz Rana Kate Redburn Ntina Tzouvala Lisa Washington Noah Zatz Student Editors Liz Brown Edie Conekin-Tooze 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 Chloe Miller Andrew Miller Roxana Moussavian Lydia Nicholson Ure Obioma

Steffi Ostrowski Sohum Pal Alyssa Peterson Derrick Rice Michaeljit Sandhu Ann Sarnak Elliot Setzer Sarang Shah Isra Syed Zoe Tucker Emily Villano Henry Weaver Nick Werle Anna Wherry Jesse Williams Kate Yoon