At the Blog
On (last) Monday, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez shared new research revealing that more than two-thirds of U.S. workers are subject to electronic monitoring, and that more intensive monitoring is associated with higher levels of anxiety, needing to work at unsafe speeds, and a higher likelihood of serious injury.
On (last) Tuesday, Luke Herrine explained how, in midcentury meatpacking, fierce industry competition was not the panacea that antimonopolists sometimes imagine it to be.
On Monday, Eamonn Coburn also took us on a journey to the past, describing how for much of the twentieth century, labor advocates, legislators, and judges drew a tight connection between abusive labor practices and unfair competition.
On Tuesday, Alex Gourevitch interviewed Christopher Muller about why the Black incarceration rate was lower in the South than in the North for much of the 20th century, why recent decades have witnessed rising class inequality in prison admission rates, and why functionalist explanations of incarceration often cloud our scholarly and political thinking.
And on Thursday, our comrades at the Critical Legal Collective argued that, far from posing a threat to academic freedom, DEI Statements offer a common-sense tool to obtain information intrinsic to faculty merit.
In LPE Land
The LPE Program at Harvard Law School is hiring an Executive Director. Applications are being considered on a rolling basis.
Yale Law School’s Information Society Project is hiring a one-year resident fellow. Designed for recent graduates of law or Ph.D. programs whose research is related to the digital public sphere. Applications due Dec. 18.
Two LPE stalwarts dropped new books this week. Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power traces the rise of publicly governed utilities in the twentieth-century electrification of America, while Lenore Palladino’s Good Company explains why shareholder primacy was never the right model for understanding how corporations operate.
Still grappling with the election? More helpful reflections and prognostications from Nathan Tankus, a Dissent roundtable, Quinn Slobodian and Wendy Brown on the Dig, and Perry Bacon Jr.,
Over at Lawfare, Nick Bednar has a Primer on the Civil Service and the Trump Administration.
In a new article, Guilherme Klein Martins looks at how capital ownership relates to long-run economic development.
In a new working paper, Marshall Steinbaum, Ulrich Atz, Blake Eliason, Peter Norlander, & Sérgio Pinto quantify changes in the relative autonomy of franchisees with respect to franchisors over the period 2009-2023.
On Monday, December 9 at 4p EST, the Climate and Community Institute will be hosting an online discussion, “What’s Next for the Climate Left,” featuring Thea Riofrancos, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Will Lawrence, Batul Hassan, and Johanna Bozuwa.
Also on Monday, December 9 at 10am GMT, the International Law Association Irish Branch is hosting a webinar, “Litigating the Energy Charter Treaty,” on climate change policies and investor-state dispute settlement under the Energy Charter Treaty, legal options for states to exit the treaty, and compensating fossil fuel investors. Registration here.