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LPE Originals

Taking Social Relations as the Basic Unit of Analysis

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In capitalism, social relations of production exert outsized force on all other domains, distorting and warping relations of reproduction, protection, and meaning-making without fully annihilating their internal capacity to structure relations in their distinct domains. This approach to understanding society, in which social relations are taken as the basic unit of analysis, helps clarify the place of “the state” in capitalism, the role of law in legitimating capitalism, and the relationship between culture, technology, and politics under capitalism.
LPE Originals

Politics, Culture, and Capitalism

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How much autonomy does politics have from the prevailing economic order? And what role does culture play in shaping politics? Answers to these questions will help determine law’s potential role in advancing democratic efforts to shape the terms of common life.
LPE Originals

Capital and Law as Social Forms

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Where do profits come from? And how does law legitimate capitalism? To make progress on these questions, we must dig deeper into the nature of capital and the idea of the legal form.
LPE Originals

A Social Theory of Law in Capitalism

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Understanding law’s role in producing the imperatives of capitalism and the relative power of those who occupy different roles in production allows us to identify reforms capable of transforming the structure of those relations.
LPE Originals

Twilight of the Gods

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Contemporary proponents of law and economics claim to have abandoned the idea that law is an instrument for maximizing economic efficiency and wealth. Corporate law scholars haven’t yet heard the good news.
LPE Originals

The Informal Governance of Global Capitalism

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The marginalization of international law under the second Trump administration has been a shock to the post-Cold War world order. Yet the impact of this development on the global economy has been far from uniform. Some of the most important sectors to trade — including telecommunications and civil aviation — were already governed primarily through informal, political arrangements.
LPE Originals

Keeping the (Neoliberal) Sign in the Window: Carney at Davos

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At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was widely lauded for declaring the rules-based international order effectively dead and urging middle powers to build “what we claim to believe in.” Unfortunately, as quickly became apparent, what Carney believes in is the continuation of neoliberal capitalism.
LPE Originals

Outsourcing Deportation: The Expansion of Third Country Removal

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As of May 2026, the United States has agreements with at least 27 countries to accept deportees who are neither nationals nor citizens of those countries. Seen from one perspective, this emerging regime looks like a natural extension of efforts by the United States and other countries to externalize refugee obligations and offshore migrant policing. In practice, however, third country deportation is more sinister — more akin to an illegal, “black site” extraordinary rendition than a judicial removal proceeding.
LPE Originals

A Tale of Two Seas

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For much of the past century, international lawyers have sought to drive a wedge between “economic” matters and the use of military force. Recent events in the Caribbean and the Strait of Hormuz suggest that wedge is no longer viable.
LPE Originals

The Shakedown

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The overt gangsterfication of US foreign policy, formalized through the so-called “Board of Peace,” marks the culmination of a dangerous transformation in the nature of American hegemony.
LPE Originals

The Politics of Capitalist Legitimacy

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At the core of Jason Jackson’s Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry is a longstanding conversation among Indian modernizers about how to identify and nurture the ‘right’ kind of capitalists. Yet this is not just an Indian story. Struggles over “good” and “bad” businessmen have structured political life in all capitalist societies, and the book’s deeper implication is that morality tales about virtuous entrepreneurs and predatory speculators are less descriptions of economic reality than prescriptive efforts to shape it.
LPE Originals

Modern(izing) Indian Capital?

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Jason Jackson’s erudite Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry shows that, for more than a century, Indian firms labeled as “traditional” capital faced policy hostility, while those considered “modern” were more likely to receive favorable government treatment. Yet how should we understand the modernity of so-called “modern Indian capitalists”? Did Indian capital ever shed its identity as speculators and traders, or was this classification merely a way to block foreign competition?