At the Blog
On Tuesday, Michael Wishnie explained why, contrary to conventional legal wisdom, tenure and tenure-track faculty at private universities have the right to unionize. Under the prevailing framework adopted by the Supreme Court, as well as some state laws, ladder faculty are properly considered covered employees with the statutory right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. Which faculty will be the first to embrace the strategic risk-taking and solidarity of other academic workers?
On Thursday, Eamon Coburn argued that the legal scholars and the labor movement must confront a fundamental challenge to organizing: the erosion of social norms against union-busting. By the early 1980s, charges of employer unfairness had reached new heights, as employers became increasingly willing to break the law. Today, nearly every large organization openly embraces an illegal anti-union playbook. To combat this, we need to adopt stronger legal penalties, yet we also need to revive our long-eroded social norms against interference with labor organizing.
In LPE Land
A reminder that proposals for the inaugural ALPE Conference are due by Sept. 15. The conference, which will take place on February 6-7 in Richmond, will serve as the launch for the new Association for Law and Political Economy. More information is available on the ALPE website.
Also due Sept 15: proposals for the Political Economy of Work Junior Scholar Workshop. The workshop, which will take place at Columbia University on December 5-6, 2025, will offer junior scholars feedback from a senior scholar in the field, comments from fellow junior scholars, and advice about career development.
Check out the new deposit in our ever-growing LPE syllabus bank: Sanjukta Paul’s Law & the Idea of the Market.
Speaking of good resources: are you a law student looking to get into LPE? Check out this thread with a bunch of handy materials.
On a must-listen episode of Odd Lots, Lev Menand discusses Trump’s attempt to fire the Fed’s Lisa Cook.
Over at Equitable Growth, Veena Dubal and Wilneida Negrón explain how artificial intelligence uncouples hard work from fair wages through ‘surveillance pay’ practices—and how to fix it.
In Bloomberg, Joel Michaels argues that the US government’s stake in Intel is a corrupt spin on industrial policy.
In the Baffler, Aziz Rana and Osita Nwanevu discuss Nwanevu’s new book, the return of Trump, and the pathway to democratic change.
