While scholars have recently highlighted the role of law in democratic backsliding, they have largely ignored the actors who wield this tool: lawyers. Yet as the guardians of the legal legitimacy upon which autocratic legalism depends, the profession is a critical arena of democratic struggle that merits special attention.
Ethan Ris on why you should ignore the Ivy League, Greta Krippner on the puzzling persistence of gender discrimination in insurance markets, and Grace Li on the role of associative life in prisons. Plus, the final session in our series on What To Do About the Courts, a cool job at the Roosevelt Institute, a new series on Twail and economic sanctions, a hot new piece on presidential administration, and a rebuttal to the idea that abandoning the consumer welfare standard means abandoning consumers.
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.
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.
Kate Andrias on labor’s constitutional vision, Kate Yoon on the LPE of insurance, and Anthony O’Rourke, Guyora Binder, and Rick Su on municipal insurers as an obstacle to democratic control over policing. Plus, the next session of What To Do About Those Pesky Courts with Ryan Doerfler, Aslı Bâli talks international law and Israel-Palestine, Karen Tani & Craig Konnoth discuss medicalizing civil rights, David Pozen’s (free!) new book on the history of constitutional challenges to drug laws, Simon Torracinta reviews Visions of Inequality, and Adam Tooze looks at Netanyahu’s surreal vision of Gaza 2035.
Presented with a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, corporations and right-wing trade associations have launched a series of constitutional challenges to worker rights. In response, workers are putting forward a fundamentally different vision for our economy and society — an alternative not only to business’s right-wing constitution but also to the New Deal constitutional settlement.
Jeff Gordon clarifies the debate over derisking, while Davarian Baldwin examines how universities monetize their tax-exempt status. Plus, an upcoming session of our hit series What To Do About the Courts (with Ryan Doerfler), a new issue of the JLPE, Adam Gaffney on supply-side healthcare, Josh Eidelson on prison labor in Alabama, and Tim Barker on what the shortage of 155mm shells can tell us about the future of American capitalism.
On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission enacted one of the most significant regulations of the Biden years: a comprehensive ban on non-compete clauses. Now the FTC must defend its rule in court.
The Maui Wildfires devastated West Maui in August 2023, killing people and destroying homes. But far from being an inevitable natural disaster, the fires are a predictable byproduct of nineteenth century plantation capitalism. That system’s legacies, particularly its water management, weakened the island’s ecosystem and concentrated harm on the most vulnerable people.
Aziz Rana aims to free us from Constitution worship. An abiding faith in “redemptive” constitutionalism, his new book argues, has long held back liberals, progressives, and even the Left from seriously promoting major change in our structures of government. Yet key left figures and movements have always made canny use of redemptive constitutional narratives and arguments. Rejecting that tradition leaves far too much on the table.
Given the manifest flaws of the U.S. Constitution, how did Americans come to idolize this document? Aziz Rana kicks off a symposium on his new book, The Constitutional Bind, by reflecting on the path that led to our current political predicament, and how long-buried Left thinking about state and economy might help us find our way out of it.
We offer our biannual round-up of forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent scholarship, while Premal Dharia concludes our symposium on Radical Acts of Justice. Plus, the fourth session of our Courts series with Amy Kapczynski and Ganesh Sitaraman; a special issue of Law & Contemporary Problems with work by David Grewal, Christine Desan, and others; an online reading group on Brenna Bhandar and Cheryl Harris; and an upcoming event with the FTC’s consumer protection chief, alongside Frank Pasquale and Luke Herrine.
That public defense is in a state of crisis is far from controversial. Crushing caseloads and rampant underfunding have created untenable working conditions under which even the most well-meaning defenders often struggle to effectively represent their clients. And yet, Jocelyn Simonson, in her important new book Radical Acts of Justice, identifies a deeper, more existential crisis facing public defense — not one of funding, but of purpose.
With the spring submission season nearly in the books, we highlight some of the most exciting forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles. Covering antitrust, legal theory, climate change, religion, disability, labor, consumer protection, criminal law, and so much more, this scouting report is not to be missed.
Mila Versteeg, Kevin Cope, and Gaurav Mukherjee on the right to sleep under bridges, Luke Messac on how the IRS could reduce medical debt, and Elizabeth Dale on the history of popular police power. Plus, the fourth session of our Courts series with Amy Kapczynski and Ganesh Sitaraman, a TWAIL conference on non-western Imperialisms, an upcoming event on Aziz Rana’s The Constitutional Bind, Lina Khan on the Daily Show, Jed Purdy on Raymond Williams, and Nate Holdren and Rob Hunter on Werner Bonefeld’s A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion.
