At the Blog
On Monday, Shelley Welton continued our symposium on Sandeep Vaheesan’s Democracy in Power. Welton highlights some important differences between the political economy of rural electrification and that of today’s push for clean electricity – distinctions that can help us be clear-eyed about the political hurdles facing modern public power movements.
On Wednesday, Jed Britton-Purdy interviewed Shitong Qiao about neighborhood democratization in urban China: how HOAs serve as a hotbed of civic life, why the government tolerates them, and whether they vindicate modernization theory.
In LPE Land
Save the Date! The inaugural Association of Law and Political Economy conference will be taking place February 5-7, 2026 at the University of Richmond School of Law! This conference will serve as the launch for a new Association of Law and Political Economy, an organization dedicated to the production of scholarly knowledge by academics, researchers, organizers, practitioners, and others committed to centering issues of political economy in the study of law. Look out for a formal call for papers soon – soliciting proposals for papers, paper panels, roundtables, or pedagogy/practice workshops. The conference will also include programmatic meetings and sessions to launch the association. All are welcome – including and especially those who are LPE-curious!
Tonight (Friday, June 13), LPE NYC is holding their first summer happy in Brooklyn at DSK (5-730p). Whether you have come to LPE NYC events in the past or it’s your first time, come meet other lawyers, organizers, professors, & students interested in transforming the political economy of NYC!
On Wednesday, June 18, at 2p ET, The American Constitution Society will be holding a (virtual) panel on how workers and tenants can rebuild power at the local, state and national levels. Speakers include: Ingrid Nava, Associate General Counsel, SEIU; Hon. Jennifer McEwen, Senator, Minnesota State Senate; Marina Multhaup, Senior Associate, Barnard Iglitzin, & Lavitt LLP (Counsel for Starbucks United); Greg Baltz, Co-Director, Housing Justice and Tenant Solidarity Clinic, Rutgers Law School; and Taonga Leslie, Director of Policy and Programs for Racial Justice.
In the Nation, Sam Moyn reviews Quentin Skinner’s Liberty as Independence, where he asks the question we’re all thinking but too afraid to say: what’s so positive about negative freedom?
Over at Bolts, Delaney Nolan discusses a new lawsuit against Louisiana’s system for funding eviction courts, in which justices of the peace can pad their own salaries with eviction fees.
