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Essay

The Borders of Empire

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The designations “illegal” or “economic” immigrant swiftly mark those to whom they are applied as legitimate targets of national exclusion. Public and academic discourse often treats such immigrants as the consummate political strangers, standing outside the political borders of “we the people” or “we the citizens,” whose status as citizens. . .
Essay

The Second Wave of Algorithmic Accountability

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Over the past decade, algorithmic accountability has become an important concern for social scientists, computer scientists, journalists, and lawyers. Exposés have sparked vibrant debates about algorithmic sentencing. Researchers have exposed tech giants showing women ads for lower-paying jobs, discriminating against the aged, deploying deceptive dark. . .
Essay

The Case for Basic Health

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We seem to be approaching an apotheosis of liberal health care angst, as the irresistible force of the appeal of truly universal health care meets the immovable object of Democrats’ desire to make double-triple-sure not to lose the 2020 election. Replacing our current shambles of a health care system with something much simpler and more…
Essay

When All Social Problems Become Financial Problems

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When it comes to government programs, credit support is often cheaper and less controversial than direct expenditures. Understand this, and you can understand why government officials have an incentive to define all sorts of social problems as financial ones. Government officials face considerable pressure to promote credit markets. Wall Street firms leverage. . .
Symposium

Measuring the Sustainable Corporation

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This post comes out of the early career workshop ‘Law and Political Economy in Europe’, which took place at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, at the University of Oxford, on the 7th of October 2019. For all the posts this series, click here. The impending climate crisis, the widespread social tensions and the burgeoning level of wealth and…
Announcement

Join LPE at Law & Society 2020

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Join LPE at the Law & Society Conference in 2020 as we expand the Law and Political Economy CRN (55)! There are only two and half days left to apply to the Law and Society Association (LSA) Conference, which will be held in Denver, Colorado, May 28 – May 30, 2020. All paper, panel, and session…
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: November 15, 2019

By LPE Editors

The latest in LPE World: An interview with Bolivian anthropologist Raul Rodriguez Arancibia on the role of right-wing Christian leadership in the coup against Evo Morales (Related: NACLA Statement on the Coup in Bolivia: In Solidarity with Bolivians Resisting Military Intervention and Right-Wing Violence); Let Them Eat Tech: the Democratic Party’s love. . .
Essay

Restricting Women’s Autonomy in the Name of “Eugenics”

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The public/private dichotomy—so fundamental to the liberal political and economic order—produces many (if not all) of our lived contradictions, especially our experiences of inequality along the multiple and intersecting lines of race, sex, gender, class, able-bodiedness, and so on. It should come as no surprise that where the private decision making. . .
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: November 8, 2019

By LPE Editors

Greetings, friends! Recent media that might be of interest: For a look at market fundamentalism through the story of The Economist magazine, check out this article from the New Yorker. A book review of Bhaskar Sunkara’s The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality See the October 31 episode of Doug Henwood’s. . .
Essay

The Need for Neodemocracy

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We live in a neoliberal age. For ideological reasons bound up in the epic struggle against totalitarianisms both left and right, a bold experiment in hyper-liberalism took root in the wake of the Cold War. Allowing the democratic achievements and aspirations of liberal and social democracy to atrophy, intellectuals and policymakers began an audacious celebration…. . .
Symposium

Disrupting Doctrine at Penn Law

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This post continues our series featuring efforts to organize LPE student groups at several law schools. You can read the rest of the posts here. Why do people who believe in a more just, egalitarian society go to law school? Some of us hope to learn how the law can be used to disrupt the status…

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