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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 & 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?
LPE Originals

Procedure, Inequality, and Access

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Civil procedure is political economy all the way down. Helen Hershkoff, Luke Norris, and Judith Resnik kick off a symposium on the subject by describing the promise of procedure to further equal treatment and accountable decision-making, as well as how such aspirations are undercut by resource disparities and efforts to replace the use of courts with private arbitration.
LPE Originals

The Insurance Industry Is Not the Victim

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The rapidly worsening home insurance crisis is often understood as primarily a problem for insurers. Yet the overarching policy question should not be, “how do we save the home insurance industry from collapsing?” but rather, “what role should insurance markets play in the broader suite of policies to keep people safely housed?”
LPE Originals

The Puzzling Persistence of Gender Discrimination in Insurance

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Even though gender classifications have been eliminated from most market domains, they stubbornly persist in the insurance context. To understand this puzzling persistence, we must examine the traditions of mutualism that have shaped insurance as a social institution, and how these traditions embed gender in the tools used to price risk.
LPE Originals

The Colleges are Alright

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Despite the outsized attention they receive, “Ivy Plus” schools are ultimately a footnote in the larger story of higher education. The American system, while stratified, developed in such a way that stratification does not forestall opportunity. To understand this situation, we need to look back at a (failed) crusade to restrict access to college.
LPE Originals

Facing the Quasi-Sovereignty of Insurers

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Insurers are quasi-sovereign actors that can determine the price and terms of economic inclusion. State insurance commissioners have little leverage over insurers that threaten to withdraw coverage when faced with unfavorable regulations. The story of Prop 103 in California suggests that popular mobilization might serve as a counterweight to insurers’ power.