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LPE Originals

Enough! The Spanish Fight to Limit Housing Speculation

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Throughout Spain, social movements are fighting against a chronic housing crisis caused by an influx of tourists and international capital. In this struggle, law is often a reflection of the existing neoliberal power structure, but with the support of sustained popular mobilizations, it has also served as a tool for emancipation.
LPE Originals

The Role of Coercion in the Neoliberal Economy

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As neoliberal attacks on progressive taxation emptied public coffers, states and municipalities increasingly turned to fines and fees to generate revenue. More fundamentally, criminal punishment became a necessary correlate to a state that must enforce property rights against an ever-growing multitude.
LPE Originals

Tunisia: A Case Study in Democratic Backsliding

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Once hailed as a beacon of democratic hope, Tunisia has rapidly descended into autocracy over the past three years. The failure of its decade-long democratic transition offers crucial lessons for democracies old and new in this era of rising authoritarianism.
LPE Originals

Movement Lawyering in Times of Rising Authoritarianism

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In a time of rising authoritarianism and neoliberal hegemony, movement lawyers understand that the law and legal institutions primarily serve to protect capitalism, rather than everyday people. Nevertheless, as this symposium will show, from Argentina and Brazil to Palestine, Spain, and Tunisia, movement lawyers are devising creative legal tactics in defense of democracy, pluralism, and self-determination.
LPE Originals

From the Vault: LPE & History

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The blog post is never dead. It’s not even post. We reach into the vault and highlight some of our favorite posts on LPE and history, featuring K-Sue Park, Luke Herrine, Gabriel Winant, Johanna Fernández, Aziz Rana, Vanessa Ogle, Evelyn Atkinson, William Forbath and Joseph Fishkin, Claire Dunning, Beryle Satter, and Uʻilani Tanigawa Lum and Kaulu Luʻuwai.
LPE Originals

The Unlikely Victors

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The intellectuals of the neoliberal movement are best understood as the losers of societal change — rearguard protectionists who decided that rather than concede to democracy, they would subvert and delegitimize it.
LPE Originals

Making Families Great Again

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In the resurgence of family fortunes in recent decades, regressive tax cuts tell only half the story. Just as important were trust law reforms that helped family dynasts protect their new gains in ways previously thought impossible.
LPE Originals

From the Vault: LPE on Antitrust

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To kick off a new series – From the Vault – we dip into the archive and highlight some of our favorite posts on antitrust. Featuring classics by Sanjukta Paul, Sandeep Vaheesan, Marshall Steinbaum, Brian Callaci, and John Mark Newman.
LPE Originals

The Rise of Neoliberal Public Finance

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How did the American state come to be so extravagant in its recourse to public debt issuance, yet so selectively austere in its public spending choices? To answer this question, we need to understand how two rival schools of thought — Virginia school public choice and supply side economics — converged around the imperative to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending.
LPE Originals

The Judiciary, Self-Governance, and the Rule of Law

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Earlier this year, in an effort to limit judge-shopping, the Judicial Conference adopted a policy requiring judges to be assigned through a district-wide random selection process. The rejection of this policy by judges in the Northern District of Texas is one sign among many that the judiciary is unfit to regulate itself.
LPE Originals

Who Says Evictions Should Be Efficient?

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Eviction courts are ruthlessly efficient, with the average trial lasting less than two minutes. Yet this speed comes at the expense of tenants’ due process and other rights, while its benefits primarily accrue to landlords. When civil justice reform is taken up in the name of efficiency, eviction courts challenge us to ask: what, or whom, does efficiency sacrifice?