By studying American courts from a comparative perspective, an important truth emerges: our judiciary is not simply compositionally conservative, at particular moments in history, but structurally conservative, as an institution.
When tenants head to eviction court, they often sign settlements that allow them to remain in their home so long as they abide by certain conditions. If they violate any of the conditions, they can be evicted through an expedited, alternative legal process, in which they have few procedural or substantive rights. This system of “civil probation,” overlooked in both public and scholarly debate, is effectively rewriting eviction law in favor of landlords.
Many cases that have a profound effect on poor families, such as whether they will lose their home to eviction or whether a parent will go to jail, are argued in courtrooms where no one, not even the judge, knows the law.
U.S. childcare policy increasingly drives resources into large, formal centers under the banner of “quality assurance.” This trend has devastating impacts on home-based providers and the working families they serve.
By paying greater attention to who files bankruptcy, we can learn a great deal about the social and economic disparities that plague our society. By reforming and expanding access to bankruptcy, we can chip away at some of these disparities.
The adoption of fossil fuels to power the world economy has depended upon a fossil law that arranges a particular type of market and enforces a particular balance of power. One understudied, but central, aspect of this process is the use of state and corporate violence to compel the extraction and consumption of oil, gas, and coal.
The existing system of international economic law is under great strain. This post offers a reading of the problem and proposes alternative directions for the future. In brief, the system has evolved from what John Ruggie called “embedded liberalism” to what David M. Trubek and I describe as “embedded neoliberalism.” The past couple of decades have witnessed something of a truce between those who designed the system and those who now are actors within it. But today this truce is largely crumbling.
In response to the likely fall of Roe, commentators have suggested that tribal lands might serve as safe harbors for abortion in conservative states. While tribes ought to possess the territorial authority to regulate reproductive healthcare as they see fit, this proposal overlooks important legal, financial, political, and ethical considerations that make the prospect of such safe harbors unlikely.
Companies and their investors extract large amounts of wealth from people’s data. Yet because tax law treats users of digital platforms as consumers, rather than producers, neither these users nor their home countries receive any compensation in return. How might international tax law be used to mitigate the harms of this exploitative arrangement?
In a society as deeply divided as our own, it is fanciful to think that we will be able to deliberate our way to a consensus. To resolve the longstanding puzzle of the administrative state’s democratic legitimacy, we need to resist the neoliberal impulse to erase politics and, instead, design opportunities for genuine contestation.
If one spends too much time around mainstream economists, one might be inclined to think the whole idea of a state enforcing norms of fair price is either redundant or perverse. But we know better than that.
Hot dogs are not sandwiches, work meetings are not retreats, and shareholders are not investors. Yet only one of these conceptual mistakes illicitly lends support to the idea that all corporate activity should benefit shareholders.
Jobs have come roaring back since the big losses of 2020, GDP has grown at its fastest annual rate in nearly four decades, and family balance sheets have become much stronger. Why, then, are Americans so unhappy about the economy?
Can LPE offer a distinctive perspective on digital mass surveillance by the police? Or does it have nothing to add to the more general civil-libertarian and civil-rights-based objections to new forms of police surveillance as potentially oppressive and often discriminatory?
This essay examines LAPD’s use of “reform” strategies to co-opt criticism and expand data-driven policing, with a focus on the role of lawyers and legal academics.
