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 (from our own LPE Blog) 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.
The series will offer an overview of the law and political economy approach with some of the leading voices in this emerging field. It begins with two introductory lectures by Amy Kapczynski and Angela Harris, and then will include a series of lectures addressing the insights to be gained from viewing the areas of law that make up the 1L curriculum through an LPE lens. The first of these doctrinally-focused lectures will be with Jedediah Britton-Purdy on Constitutional Law, with the remaining topics to be addressed in the Spring semester.
Please join us October 8th at 5:30pm ET for the first event, Intro to Law & Political Economy I with Amy Kapczynski (with commentary by Sabeel Rahman and Ganesh Sitaraman)
We live in an age of rising inequality, deep racialized and gendered injustice, hollowed out democracy, and climate catastrophe. Is legal thought today adequate to these challenges – and if not, how must it change? Many come into law school eager to learn how the law can be deployed to serve the ends of justice – but end up learning instead why and how the law should advance efficiency, or how and why public law cannot interfere with deep structural inequalities. Why is law school – and especially the first year – so alienating?
Suggested Readings:
Coronavirus and the Politics of Care
Building the Law & Political Economy Framework: Beyond the 20th-Century Synthesis
Upcoming Events in the Series:
October 22 – Intro to Law & Political Economy II with Angela Harris
November 18 – An LPE Approach to Constitutional Law, Jedediah Britton-Purdy
More to come in the Spring!