At the Blog
On Monday, Dan Farbman looked back at the efforts of abolitionist activists in the 1850s to draw some lessons for the present crisis. Focusing the largely forgotten case of Horace Preston — a free black man arrested on false charges and enslaved in 1852 — Farbman explains how lawyers used the courtroom as a site of public contestation and political organizing.
On Thursday, the Blog shared some of our favorite summer beach (okay, library) reads, with our biannual list of the hottest forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent scholarship.
In LPE Land
Cool CFP alert: Australian Progressive Legal Studies invites submissions from across disciplines and jurisdictions for a workshop on the law and political economy of contemporary authoritarian rule, taking place at the University of Queensland Law School, Brisbane, on the 8th and 9th of December 2025. Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short bio of no more than 150 words should be submitted to Ntina Tzouvala (n.tzouvala@unsw.edu.au) by the 11th of July 2025.
At HistPhil, Allison Tait revisits Henry Hansmann’s 1990 law review article, Why Do Universities Have Endowments?
At Public Seminar, Jed Purdy discusses Ecology and Democracy in a World on Fire, with some Polanyian reflections on law and politics.
At the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Talha Syed argues that we should fundamentally rethink pharmaceutical innovation policy by moving away from patents and toward a revised system of regulatory exclusivity. (And if you want the full monty, check out his recently published YLJ Feature, Does Pharma Need Patents?)
In the Boston Review, Sandeep Vaheesan reviews Abundance.
At Money on the Left, the editorial collective makes the case for Blue Bonds: A Fiscal Strategy for Overcoming Trump 2.0.
Cool paper alert: Rick Hansen has posted a new paper, Faux Campaign Finance Regulation and the Pathway to American Oligarchy.
Cool paper alert #2: Stephanie Richard has published, Against Criminalizing Wage Theft: Lessons from the Antitrafficking Movement.
