The LPE Project is teaming up with the American Constitution Society (ACS) to offer an online course introducing students to LPE analysis. This course will pair lectures and short readings that illustrate how LPE frameworks can help us examine law’s role in the perpetuation of racial and gender injustice, the devaluation of social and ecological reproduction, and the violence of the carceral state under capitalism. It will also look at how LPE scholars use the law & political economy framework to explore concrete legal reforms designed to move beyond neoliberalism and toward a genuinely responsive, egalitarian democracy, with critical attention to the need for power and movement-building as part of any such transformation. Join us for the fourth session with Sanjukta Paul.
“Law of the Platform Economy: Antitrust, Labor, & Contracts“
The “platform economy” commonly refers to a set of economic arrangements that have arisen, at least in part, in response to and as a result of technological innovation. LPE emphasizes the ways in which these economic relationships, from Uber to Amazon, have also been produced by legal innovations. Labor and antitrust law, in particular, have both been instrumental in making the platform economy possible by enabling or favoring certain forms of economic coordination, frequently mediated by contract, while disfavoring others. The platform economy also often uses contract to achieve economic coordination that would previously have taken place inside the firm—thus illuminating a preexisting settlement of legal rights and responsibilities tied to the notion of the firm, as well as making modifications to that settlement. This talk examines the legal construction of the platform economy by exploring these questions.
With commentary from Amy Kapczynski.
Suggested Readings:
pg 1-14 of Professor Paul’s “Fissuring and the Firm Exception”