At the Blog
On Monday, Melinda Cooper kicked off a fresh year at the blog by explaining how two rival schools of neoliberal thought — Virginia school public choice and supply side economics — converged on the imperative to rein in redistributive uses of public spending. While the former, led by James M. Buchanan, pursued constitutional limits and supermajority requirements on spending and taxation, the latter understood that United States could run perpetual deficits so long as they waged a permanent war against wage and price inflation. The two views thus converged on that idea that generous public services or redistributive public spending must remain off the table. Instead, the government could pursue selective tax cuts that favored the holders of financial assets, since such spending was non-inflationary. The rise of neoliberal public finance, Cooper argues, led to important shifts in the organisational forms of capitalism, including the dominance of private investment funds and the recent proliferation of family offices.
On Wednesday, Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel Lozada explained how Law and Economics infected our academic and governing institutions. Though framed as a response to David Bernstein’s recent critique of LPE, the piece is well worth reading on its own, as a brief history of where the law went wrong and the effects this had on society. As the authors conclude, “Law and Economics has (unfortunately) had much success in making antitrust enforcement lenient, hamstringing regulation, promoting market solutions that fail ordinary consumers and workers, and raising the status of the wealthy to glorious new heights. Sometimes, you get what you pay for.”
And on Thursday, we launched a new series – From the Vault – by dipping into our archive and highlighting some of our favorite posts on antitrust: featuring Sanjukta Paul on the democratic origins of antitrust, Sandeep Vaheesan on the need for a fair competition philosophy, Marshall Steinbaum on the antitrust case against gig economy labor platforms, Brian Callaci on the limits of anti-monopsony antitrust, John Mark Newman on the recent gains of the new antimonopoly movement, and more!
In LPE Land
Can’t get enough antitrust? On Thursday, September 12th at 12:50-2pm PST (at Berkeley and online), Talha Syed will be discussing the subject: What is antitrust? How can we use the tools of LPE to think about the field? And how have various dominant economic policies influenced the main policy and doctrinal debates?
On Wednesday September 18th at 12:10pm ET (at Yale and online), Aziz Rana and Amy Kapczynski will be discussing his recent book, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them. For a brief overview of the book, make sure to check out Rana’s blog post on it from this spring.
Roll Call: To complement our biannual roundup forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent scholarship in US law reviews, we’re currently putting together a round-up that focuses on Global LPE Scholarship published so far in 2024. To nominate a piece, send nominations to managingeditor@lpeblog.org with a link to the piece. Self-nominations are highly encouraged.
In the Boston Review, Sam Bagg explains why democracy requires thinking about power alongside process.
In the Nation, Sam Moyn discusses the surprising origins and politics of equality.
In the NYT Magazine, Rachel Corbett visits Próspera, the for-profit city-state off the coast of Honduras. For slightly more critical coverage, see David Adler and José Miguel Ahumada’s post, Why Is Biden Endorsing Corporate Colonialism in Honduras?
At the Roosevelt Institute, David Stein has a new brief on The Deficit-Hawk Takeover: How Austerity Politics Constrained Democratic Policymaking.
In Fiance and Society, a forum on Brett Christopher’s Our Lives in Their Portfolios, featuring Lenore Palladino, Madison Condon, Michael McCarthy, Bruno Bonizzi, and Annina Kaltenbrunner.
And in N+1, Dan Berger reviews Jocelyn Simonson’s Radical Acts of Justice and Orisanmi Burton’s Tip of the Spear.
