At the Blog
On Monday, the LPE kicked off the new year by asking Amy Kapczynski, Aziz Rana, and Robert Tsai how we might amend the Constitution. Amy Kapczynski and Robert Tsai both proposed amendments that would reduce the outsized power of the Supreme Court to interfere with democratically-enacted legislation, while Aziz Rana proposed the constitutional equivalent of wishing for more wishes: a simplified Congressional amendment process.
On Tuesday, Sanjukta Paul argued that the conventional interpretation of American antitrust law’s origins has under-emphasized their pro-democratic and egalitarian tenor. As the Sherman Act’s legislative history makes evident, its primary target was the concentration of economic power, rather than coordination among workers, farmers, and other smaller producers.
And on Thursday, Matthew Bodie and Grant Hayden explained why workers should be given a meaningful role in running the enterprises for which they sacrifice so much. Codetermination, while widely ignored in the United States, is a time-tested, theoretically sound approach to corporate governance with an impressive track record in many other countries.
ICYMI: the LPE Blog wrapped up 2021 by providing an overview of everything we published(!) during the previous year and shouting out some of our favorite pieces.
In LPE Land
Today at 12p ET, the WINIR Panel on Law and Political Economy, featuring Amy Kapczynski, Nicholas Mercuro, and Katharina Pistor, will discuss the emergence and intellectual roots of LPE, as well as the challenges LPE faces in making an impact on teaching, research and practice.
Next Friday (Jan 21) at 2p ET, the LPE Project will host Keywords: CLS & LPE on ‘Political Economy’ and ‘Indeterminacy.’ This zoom event will bring together participants in the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) and Law and Political Economy (LPE) movements to discuss their approaches to the concepts of “political economy” and “indeterminacy.” The panelists will include Libby Adler, Amy Kapczynski, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Klare, Akbar Rasulov, and Talha Syed, and the panel will be moderated by Aziza Ahmed.
On Tuesday, February 1st at 4p ET, the LPE Project will host Health, Movements, and Power-building. Featuring Maya Sandler, Johanna Fernandez, Lucie White, and Gregg Gonsalves, this zoom panel will discuss the different power-building and organizing strategies of the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and the Grey Panthers, and how they worked both inside and outside the systems of traditional medicine to make health central to their political activism.
CFP: The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is soliciting brief (750-1,000 word) reflections on the critical intersections of work, health, and disability raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, which will be published as a digital symposium on Bill of Health, the blog of the Petrie-Flom Center. They are reviewing proposals on a rolling basis with priority to those submitted in advance of the January 21 deadline.
