In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee? Here at the blog, we prefer to measure a year in the posts that we share together. And by that metric, 2023 was solid gold and ton heavy. With 150+ authors offering the sharpest analysis in the legal blogosphere and more loyal readers than ever before, we’ve been making waves. So before plunging into the icy waters of 2024, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on the year that was. Today, we bring you The Big List of Everything We Published™ and, on Wednesday, our editorial staff will highlight some of their favorite entries.
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As always, we tried to keep you informed about the insights being developed in the wider LPE universe:
What to Watch: The Thirteen Best Panels Streaming This Weekend - Our guide to LPE: Labor, Social Control, and Counterpower Early Edition: (Some of) the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship - Our Spring 2023 scouting report Early Edition: (More of) the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship - Our Fall 2023 scouting report
We also summoned fresh insights into existence, by convening symposia on a range of topics:
Workplace Surveillance, Collective Resistance
Workplace Surveillance, Collective Resistance: A Symposium - Ann Sarnak Labor Under Many Eyes: Tracking the Long-Haul Trucker - Karen Levy Surveillance and Resistance in Amazon’s Growing Platform Ecosystem - Sarrah Kassem Electronic Surveillance Is Short-Circuiting Employment and Labor Law - Reed Shaw Beyond Privacy: Changing the Data Power Dynamics in the Workplace - Matthew Bodie Knitting Together Patchwork Privacy and Labor Law Frameworks to Protect Workers from Corporate Surveillance - Alvin Velazquez
Networks, Platforms, and Utilities
Networks, Platforms, and Utilities: Law and Policy - Morgan Ricks, Ganesh Sitaraman, Shelley Welton, and Lev Menand The Political Economy of NPU Law - Amy Kapczynski “What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?” Dismantling Neoliberal Pieties One Sector at a Time - Yochai Benkler
Reconsidering Reparations
Reconsidering Reparations - Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò Reconsidering the Future - Daniel Aldana Cohen What Will Worldmaking Require? - Alyssa Battistoni Development for Some, Disaster for Others: The Case for Reparations - Matthew Robinson
LPE of Rural America
The Law and Political Economy of Rural America - Ann M. Eisenberg Regulation’s Role in Geographic Inequality - Ganesh Sitaraman, Morgan Ricks, and Christopher Serkin Rural and Racialized: How Property Law Perpetuates Racial Disparities - Emily A. Prifogle, Jessica A. Shoemaker Putting Rural Communities on the (Broadband) Map - Christopher Ali The Carceral Conjuncture in Central Appalachia - Judah Schept Rural Civil Disobedience and Fossil Capital: Toward Radical Futures - Nicholas F. Stump
China and LPE
China and the Political Economy of the International Legal Order - Jedidiah Kroncke On the Place of Racial Capitalism in China’s Northwestern Frontier - Vincent Wong Marxism and China’s Effort to Build “Foreign-Related Rule of Law” - Wanshu Cong Labor Rights and the U.S.-China Relationship: From Neoliberal Consensus to Imperial Rivalry - Eli Friedman Toward a Postmetaphysical Approach to the Study of Chinese Law - Xiaoqian Hu Civil Procedure in U.S.-China Relations - Yanbai Andrea Wang Analyzing China: The Role of Empathy in Comparative Law - Alex L. Wang
Captive Labor
Labor and the Carceral State - Erin Hatton Not Worker, But Chattel - Ivan Kilgore Untangling the Nineteenth-Century Roots of Mass Incarceration - Rebecca McLennan ‘Better’ Work Won’t Fix Prisons - Stephen Wilson, Minali Aggarwal, Jacqueline Groccia, and Lydia Villaronga Building Anti-Carceral Unionism: A Q&A on Local 79’s “Real Re-Entry” Campaign - Han Lu and Bernard Callegari Alabama Rising: The Past, Present, and Future of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement - Andrew Ross, Aiyuba Thomas Strategic Lessons from Abolitionist Labor Struggle In Immigration Detention - Lisa Knox, Hamid Yazdan Panah, Serafin Andrade Lopez From Work in Prison to Carcerality at Work - Noah Zatz
Climate, Economics, and “Green Capitalism”
Offset Frontiers, Fossil Capitalism and the Law - Larry Lohmann Renewable Power: Who Will Own the Clean Energy Future? - William Boyd Net-Zero Emissions: Good Climate Science, Bad Climate Policy - Shelley Welton Risk-Rating and Networked Authority: A Climate Leviathan in Formation? - Savannah Cox, John Hogan Morris, Zac Taylor Damage Functions (Or Why I Am Mad at Economists) - Madison Condon Plan Halmahera: Industrial Urbanism, Rechargeable Batteries, Replaceable Bodies - Hendro Sangkoyo
Economic Sanctions & Twail
Economic Sanctions: Where LPE Meets Third World Approaches to International Law - Aslı Ü. Bâli, Ntina Tzouvala The Opacity of Economic Coercion - Jessica Whyte Sanctions’ New Colonizers - Maryam Jamshidi Successful Failures: Economic Sanctions, Humanitarianism, and the Undoing of Post-Colonial Sovereignty - Ntina Tzouvala The Antinomies of “Peaceful” Sanctions - Eva Nanopoulos Weapons Against the Weak - Aslı Ü. Bâli
Torn Apart & Prosecuting Poverty
Building a World Without Family Policing - Dorothy Roberts Building a World Without Criminalized Care - Wendy Bach Under the Guise of Care - Amna Akbar How Can Academic Research Support Non-Reformist Reforms? - Nancy Polikoff Caring for Children by Punishing Parents - Shanta Trivedi The Profits of Family Policing and Punishment - Jane M. Spinak The Deep Roots Linking Help and Punishment - Tina Lee The Maternal Control Complex - Kelley Fong
Does LPE Need Theory?
Does LPE Need Theory? - Samuel Moyn In Defense of Theoretical Pluralism - Jedediah Britton-Purdy Legal Theory in the Lowercase - Ntina Tzouvala In Defense of Theoretical Quietism - Sanjukta Paul Did CLS Have (Much Of) Any Theory? - Talha Syed Critical Legal Theory & Radical Political Praxis - Bernard E. Harcourt Is Capitalism “a Thing”? - Matthew Dimick The Role of Law in Capitalism - Yochai Benkler
Non-Reformist Reforms
A Horizon Beyond Legalism: On Non-Reformist Reforms - Amna Akbar What Non-Reformist Reforms Meant to Us - Karl Klare What Does Critical Race Theory Teach Us About Non-Reformist Reforms? - Fanna Gamal Emancipatory Horizons in Tenant Organizing - Tara Raghuveer Abolition in the Interstices - Jamelia Morgan
But not all of our #content was organized into symposia. Here are our one-off posts, loosely organized by topic:
Antitrust
Eight Reactions to the FTC’s Proposed Ban on Non-competes - Suresh Naidu, Catherine L. Fisk, David Seligman, Leah Samuel, Sandeep Vaheesan, Sanjukta Paul, Najah A. Farley, Basel Musharbash Brandeis in Brussels: What American Reformers Can Learn from the European Union - Chase Foster, Kathleen Thelen The Treatise That Has Misled Antitrust Lawyers for Decades - Sandeep Vaheesan, Andy Fitch
Housing
When the Public University Is the Corporate Landlord - Charmaine Chua, Desiree Fields, David Stein A Wagner Act for Tenant Unions - Duncan Kennedy, Karl Klare, Michael Turk Why Should Tenant Unions Look to Labor Law? - Greg Baltz, Shakeer Rahman Why Unions Should Join the Housing Fight - Zoe Tucker
Labor
The House Always Wins: The Algorithmic Gamblification of Work - Veena Dubal Can Consumer Law Protect Workers? - Jonathan Harris Can Wage Boards Work in America? - César F. Rosado Marzán Cemex and the Right to Organize: Three Theories of the Case - Brishen Rogers Surveillance Wages: A Taxonomy - Zephyr Teachout Palestinian Freedom, Antisemitism Accusations, and Civil Rights Law - Noah Zatz
Courts
Race and Profit in the Civil Courts - Kathryn A. Sabbeth, Lauren Sudeall, Jessica K. Steinberg, Tonya L. Brito Terrorism Torts and the Right to Colonize - Darryl Li How the Court is Pitting Workers Against Each Other - James D. Nelson, Elizabeth Sepper, Kate Redburn Seven Reactions to Biden v. Nebraska - Louise Seamster, Blake Emerson, Marshall Steinbaum, Ryann Liebenthal, Jonathan D. Glater, Persis Yu, and Luke Herrine
Policymaking
Rewiring Regulatory Review - K. Sabeel Rahman Some Short Circuits in the Rewiring of Regulatory Review - Luke Herrine The Origins of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex - Claire Dunning The Care Bureaucracy - Yiran Zhang How to Protect Federal Agencies through Collaborative Bargaining - Asher Morse Who Cares About Efficiency? - Luke Herrine
Market Governance
What’s Beyond “Beyond Neoliberalism”? - Amy Kapczynski What the Telegraph Can Teach Us About the Moral Economy - Evelyn Atkinson The Merger of Government and Religion - Elizabeth Sepper, James D. Nelson Is This the End of Corporate Capitalism? - Jerry Davis
Legal and Political Theory
Reading the Post-Neoliberal Right - Amy Kapczynski Your Boss Doesn’t Care About You - Barry Maguire What CLS Meant by the Indeterminacy Thesis - Akbar Rasulov Jackson, Mississippi, and the Contested Boundaries of Self-Governance - Brian Highsmith Two Fallacies of Democratic Design - Samuel Bagg
Social Movements
Toward Prefigurative Lawyering - Sameer Ashar What Law Clinics Left Behind - Talia K. Rothstein RICO and Stop Cop City: The Long War Against the Left - Dan Berger Students for Justice in Palestine, Governors for Authoritarianism in Florida - Maryam Jamshidi A Call for Institutional Fairness on Palestine - Ryan D. Doerfler, Sanjukta Paul, E. Tendayi Achiume, Aziza Ahmed, Sameer Ashar, Aslı Ü. Bâli, Monica Bell, Nikolas Bowie, LaToya Baldwin Clark, Veena Dubal, William E. Forbath, Tarek Z. Ismail, Karl Klare, Genevieve Lakier, Darryl Li, Samuel Moyn, K-Sue Park, Katharina Pistor, Aziz Rana, Dorothy Roberts, Jocelyn Simonson, Noah Zatz
Ecological Reproduction
Tax Policy for a Climate in Crisis - Martha McCluskey Climate Change and the Neoliberal Imagination - Douglas Kysar
Money & Banking
Six Reactions to the Silicon Valley Bank Debacle - Christine Desan, Lev Menand, Raúl Carrillo, Rohan Grey, Dan Rohde, and Hilary J. Allen Who Is Risk Taking For? Banking in the Shadow of SVB - Joel Michaels Upon the Conviction of the Villain Sam Bankman-Fried - Raúl Carrillo
Criminal Legal System
The High Cost of Cheap Prisons - Tommaso Bardelli, Zach Gillespie, Thuy Linh Tu Defendants, United, Could Strike the State Blindsided - Andrew Manuel Crespo Cruel, But Not Unusual, Market Foundations - Sandeep Dhaliwal
Tech
Dismantle or Democratize Big Tech? - Paul Gowder Towards a Legal Understanding of Social Data - Amanda Parsons and Salomé Viljoen How Not to Regulate Digital Platforms - Elettra Bietti Seven Reactions to Biden’s Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence - John Mark Newman, Veena Dubal, Salomé Viljoen, Ifeoma Ajunwa, Nikolas Guggenberger, Elettra Bietti, Jason Jackson, JS Tan
Transnational LPE
How Free Trade Threatens Global Democracy - Adam Dean How Terrorism Torts Could Challenge Israeli Settler Violence - Maryam Jamshidi The Latest US Export to Brazil? Legalized Labor Exploitation - Veena Dubal, Renan Kalil Economic Coercion in a Multipolar World - Ryan Martínez Mitchell Heterodox Corporate Laws in the Global South - Mariana Pargendler Why Is Biden Endorsing Corporate Colonialism in Honduras? - David Adler, José Miguel Ahumada
