LPE Originals
A Modern Democratic State, If We Can Keep It
William Novak responds to the recent symposium held on his New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State.
LPE Originals
The Political Economy of Journalistic Objectivity
By
Sydney Forde
Often lauded as the cornerstone of American journalism, the ideal of journalistic objectivity enshrined in corporate newsrooms primarily serves the bottom line, rather than an informed public. Fixing the industry’s misguided attachment to neutrality thus requires addressing its driving force: the economic incentives of news organizations.
LPE Originals
Labour Law and Political Economy
As a field of law, labour law draws it legitimacy from its capacity to impose a stable order on a conflictual relationship of power and exploitation, and to institutionalize such order as one of justice between classes. Because of this function, labour law is and must be open to contestation and change by those affected by it, responsive to pressures not just for internal dogmatic consistency or external economic efficiency but also for human interests and demands for non-commercial social justice.
LPE Originals
The Politics of the Law of Biden’s Student Debt Jubilee
By
Luke Herrine
Even as the Supreme Court seeks to squelch legal creativity in support of progressive causes, their power to do so only extends so far. We cannot let them define the terms of the debate.
LPE Originals
When Labor Law Protects Corporate Interests Better than Corporate Law Does
The prevailing joint employer standard requires a showing of greater control than state-based corporate law requires when applying traditional concepts of agency law to parent-subsidiary and franchisor-franchisee relationships. As a result, the current standard leaves millions of workers without meaningful collective bargaining rights because companies that “call the shots” avoid getting called to the bargaining table. Thankfully, this past week, the Board issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that signals the NLRB’s desire to return to a more protective standard.
LPE Originals
The Law and Political Economy of Religious Freedom
By
Kate Redburn
As recent Supreme Court cases make clear, the conservative legal movement seeks to replace the New Deal settlement not with a libertarian vision of market freedom, but rather an arrangement in which the market is embedded in a conservative Christian social vision.
LPE Originals
Recovering Contingency within American Antimonopoly and Democracy
William Novak’s New Democracy demonstrates that the long progressive era was devoted to a reconfiguration of the very nature of modern American capitalism. Yet we must not lose sight of the different visions of state, economy, and democracy that comprised the progressive project.
LPE Originals
Who’s Afraid of Public Ownership?
By
Jay Clayton
Despite growing interest in public ownership at the municipal and even national level, LPE scholars have expressed relatively little interest in the topic. This is a mistake: proposals for public ownership can unite the left by achieving multiple policy goals at once and provide an alternative vision of what society should look like.
LPE Originals
LPE and the Global Food Crisis
By
William Boyd
Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food prices are higher in real terms today than at any point since the early 1970s. Yet it is the underlying political economy of the global food system that has created the conditions where hundreds of millions of people don’t get enough to eat.
LPE Originals
How Agencies Should Respond to West Virginia v. EPA
Each year, the Supreme Court hears roughly 65 merits cases. The administrative state, meanwhile, issues thousands of rules. Given this institutional reality, along with the inherent vagueness of the so-called major questions doctrine, the worst mistake an agency can make is to clip its own wings.
LPE Originals
The Role of Courts in American Political Economy
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.
LPE Originals
How Civil Probation is Rewriting Eviction Law
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.
LPE Originals
Courtrooms Where No One Knows the Law
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.
LPE Originals
Formalizing Childcare Through Subsidies: A Distributional Critique
By
Yiran Zhang
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.
LPE Originals
Bankruptcy as Social Safety Net
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.