As the Trump administration moves to roll back clean energy tax credits, the real question isn’t whether renewable energy will survive, but who will own and control the infrastructure that powers America’s future.
In Democracy in Power, Sandeep Vaheesan argues that New Deal rural electrification efforts can serve as a model for public power in today’s energy system. There are, however, important differences between the political economy of rural electrification and that of today’s climate crisis. Understanding these distinctions can help us be clear-eyed about the political hurdles facing modern public power movements.
A collection of our favorite posts about the legal underpinnings of today’s housing crisis, and about what might be done to restore a conception of housing as shelter, not commodity. Featuring Angela Harris, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, David Stein, Kathryn Sabbeth, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Klare, Tara Raghuveer, and more!
Calls for public ownership often highlight the downsides of private ownership: how capitalist firms prioritize profit over providing quality services at fair prices. But what, specifically, do we value in its public counterpart? While Sandeep Vaheesan defends public ownership in the power sector primarily on democratic grounds, the left should emphasize its potential to address key obstacles to rapid decarbonization.
What can the history of publicly-governed electrical utilities in the twentieth century teach us about today’s struggle for an accountable power sector? Sandeep Vaheesan kicks of a symposium on his new book, Democracy in Power, by tracing the history of electrification during the New Deal and offering a blueprint for a publicly-led path to decarbonization.
The persecution of transgender people, though often treated as a niche concern, is central to today’s political and economic realignments. These attacks are not ancillary but entangled with broader efforts to reassert control over race, gender, and migration.
The Trump Administration’s anti-trans policies should be seen as central, rather than peripheral, to the creation of what Melinda Cooper has called “an anti-social state” — a state that would abandon every duty to serve its citizens and residents, whose sole purpose would be to amplify presidential executive power.
The Manhattan Institute’s obsessive focus on trans medicine is a part of its broader effort to erode public trust in medical professionals and federal health authorities.
Much as Reagan invoked the welfare queen as a diversion to absorb public outcry against devastating cuts to the social safety net, Trump today offers trans people – with their supposedly abundant, easily accessible healthcare – as scapegoats to justify a broader conservative health policy agenda.
A collection of our most illuminating posts on administrative law and democratic governance, featuring Sabeel Rahman, Karen Tani, Sophia Z. Lee, Kate Jackson, Daniel Walters, Blake Emerson, and more.
In mainstream American discourse, offshore financial centers are generally regarded as transnational dens of iniquity, where wealthy individuals conceal their assets and attempt to evade taxation. Yet in some post-colonial jurisdictions, offshore financial law has also played an important role in promoting economic independence.
One common critique of trust law is that it exacerbates wealth inequality by creating layers of financial secrecy for families with substantial assets. Yet in facilitating the purchase of high-end real estate, private jets, and super-yachts, trust law also produces visible, even mappable effects on our physical landscape.
Trust law, originally devised as a way to protect the assets of vulnerable parties, has undergone a wholesale transformation in the past half-century. It now primarily serves the rich by providing them with a new form of super-property, insulated from taxation, reporting requirements, and creditor claims. How did this perversion of trust law come about? And why did it confront so little democratic resistance?
To accompany your new holiday gizmos and gadgets, we reach into the vault and highlight some of our favorite posts on technology, featuring Salomé Viljoen, Veena Dubal, Frank Pasquale, Yochai Benkler, Raúl Carrillo, Meredith Whittaker, Genevieve Lakier & Nelson Tebbe, Matthew Bodie, Elizabeth Joh, and Julie Cohen.
Javier Milei aims to dismantle the welfare state and eradicate left-wing social movements. To what extent can the law stop him?
