At the Blog
On Monday, Brian Highsmith and Kathleen Thelen argued that, in terms of both power and design, the American judiciary is unique among peer countries, and that this distinctiveness helps explain why American courts have so often played a conservative role in our system. By outsourcing the task of retrenchment to the judiciary, organized interests can concentrate their efforts on a known handful of committed loyalists serving lifetime appointments, whose decrees are practically unreviewable by the political branches and who will bear most of the blame for unpopular retrenchments.
On Weds, Raúl Carrillo introduced “Price Stability Beyond the Fed”—the LPE Blog’s symposium on the hottest topic in macroeconomics: inflation. While legal scholarship has had little to say about the political economy of “price stability” in some time, our all-star line-up — Lev Menand, Karina Patricio, John Morris, Darrick Hamilton, Amy Kapczynski, William Boyd, David Stein, Devika Dutt and Rohan Grey — will significantly expand capacity on that front.
And on Thursday, Lev Menand debunked the widespread myth that it’s the Fed’s job to fight inflation. As he writes, “Congress did not design the Fed to minimize price increases as a general matter. Instead, it gave the Fed a single mission—promoting monetary expansion at a rate consistent with full capacity utilization in the economy over the long run. In fact, Congress was concerned primarily with deflation, a monetary problem that can trigger deep recessions.”
In LPE Land
On Feb. 16-18, ANU Law will be holding conference on public law & inequality. International registration for virtual access is free, and the conference will feature several LPE stalwarts, including Amna Akbar, Sam Moyn, Ntina Tzouvala, Veena Dubal.
On Feb. 18-19, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review is partnering with Jasmine Harris and Karen Tani to present a zoom symposium entitled, “The Disability Frame: Opportunities, Costs, and Constraints in the Broad Struggle for Inclusion.”
The Consumer Law Scholars Conference (March 3-4, 2022) and the Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice at Berkeley Law invite legal services attorneys who are considering entering academia to attend the conference as Fleming Scholars. If you know a legal services attorney who is contemplating academia, please let them know about this opportunity. And if you are that attorney, contact Ben Hiebert or Ted Mermin to learn more.
