Skip to content

Searching: courts

The Law and Political Economy Project
Symposium

Successful Failures: Economic Sanctions, Humanitarianism, and the Undoing of Post-Colonial Sovereignty

By

Humanitarian concerns have generally failed to bring about concrete legal limits on the use of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy. However, as the ongoing saga concerning the Afghan central bank’s assets indicates, they have succeeded in something much more fundamental: they have legitimized the use of sanctions as a tool for undoing and re-assembling the sovereignty of a postcolonial state.

Symposium

From Work in Prison to Carcerality at Work

By

How might organized labor be engaged in ending mass incarceration? One approach is to emphasize how carceral labor is exploited as a substitute for rights-bearing “free labor.” But the mere threat of substitution does not ensure solidarity. A more promising avenue is to consider how carcerality itself extends into so-called “free” labor markets. Under this “carceral labor continuum,” anti-carceral unionism emerges not from broad concerns over economic substitution but instead from the practical demands of workplace organizing.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: May 26, 2023

By LPE Editors

Martha McCluskey on tax policy and climate change, Han Lu and Bernard Callegari on fighting back against the exploitation of formerly incarcerated workers, and Andrew Ross and Aiyuba Thomas on the past, present, and future of the prisoners’ rights movement in Alabama. Plus, a new issue of the JLPE, a call for abstracts on courts and politics, a virtual book salon on the political economy of finance, and new articles by Kate Redburn, Liz Sepper, and James Nelson.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: May 19, 2023

By LPE Editors

Joel Michaels on risk-weighting, Rebecca McLennan on the nineteenth-century roots of carceral labor, and Stephen Wilson, Minali Aggarwal, Jacqueline Groccia, and Lydia Villarong on why incarcerated people work. Plus, the hottest job in LPE Land is up for grabs, Saule Omarova and Ilmi Granoff discuss green banking, and Jed Britton-Purdy argues that the courts should be more political.
Symposium

Untangling the Nineteenth-Century Roots of Mass Incarceration

By

Popular historical narratives often trace the origins of penal labor to the post-Civil War South. Yet as insightful and politically useful as this familiar story may be, it overlooks the vast system of forced penal servitude that took shape in the antebellum North. Untangling the nineteenth-century roots of mass incarceration and forced labor can help clarify the shifting dynamics of expropriation, exploitation, and racialization across the long history of the U.S. carceral state.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: May 5, 2023

By LPE Editors

Sabeel Rahman on the Biden Administration’s overhaul of the regulatory review process, Yanbai Andrea Wang on the role of civil procedure in U.S.-China Relations, and Alex Wang on the benefits of empathy in comparative legal analysis. Plus, interviews with Julie Suk on her new book and Gabriel Winant on class composition in the 21st century, new essays by Molly Coleman, Aaron Benanav, and Tim Barker, and a student note that endeavors to analyze US election law through an LPE lens.
Symposium

Civil Procedure in U.S.-China Relations

By

In comparison with American courts, which increasingly adjudicate a narrow set of transnational cases, Chinese courts rarely forfeit authority over transnational cases. This development is reshaping the landscape of transnational litigation, as China’s appetite for taking on transnational cases calls attention to the advantages of exercising jurisdiction over a case — advantages that can dictate the outcome of cases in favorable ways, and which play an underappreciated role in the configuration of the international legal order.
Symposium

China and the Political Economy of the International Legal Order

By

There is an urgent need to develop a genuine critical left internationalism to help think through issues related to China. Yet engaging this subject from an LPE perspective confronts two broad challenges. First, it requires bringing LPE concepts into conversation with debates regarding the diverse legal underpinnings of the global economic order. Second, it requires developing a left internationalism that embraces a non-U.S.-centric anti-imperialist position, moving beyond limited Cold War imaginaries.
Essay

Defendants, United, Could Strike the State Blindsided

By

The American penal system is astonishingly vulnerable to the threat of defendant collective action. The reason is simple: the system is massively overleveraged. Major city court systems, which only have the capacity to bring to trial about 3 percent of the cases they handle, are dependent on plea bargaining to remain minimally functional. If even a tiny percentage of defendants banded together and refused to plead guilty, they would bring the administration of criminal justice to a grinding halt. What might such a plea strike look like? And should such a tactic be attempted?

Announcement

Early Edition: (Some of) the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship

By

With the spring submission season nearly in the books, and our Twitter feeds abuzz with placement announcements, the LPE Blog highlights some of the most exciting forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles. Covering tech, care, labor, criminal justice, religious freedom, money and banking, property, the administrative state, and so much more, this scouting report is not to be missed.
Announcement

What to Watch: The Thirteen Best Panels Streaming This Weekend

By

Forget Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Over the next three days, you’ll want to turn that dial to Law and Political Economy: Labor, Social Control, and Counterpower. From the comfort of your own home, stream panels on the legal regulation of data and technology, socialist constitutionalism, decarcerating the welfare state, and so much more. Zoom links for the various panels can be found within this post, along with some paired blog posts from our (vast) archive.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: March 17, 2023

By LPE Editors

Darryl Li on the weaponization of terrorism torts, Emily Prifogle and Jessica Shoemaker on racial disparities in rural America, and Christopher Ali on the erasure of rural communities by the FCC. Plus, we’re asking you (yes you) to tell us about the hottest new LPE law review articles. In exchange, as always, we’ve gathered the best LPE-content from around the web, including all the must-read pieces on SVB.
Essay

Terrorism Torts and the Right to Colonize

By

The D.C. Circuit appeals court heard arguments last month in a bizarre case: the Jewish National Fund is leading a lawsuit against the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a nation-wide coalition of groups advocating for Palestinian liberation, on accusations of supporting terrorism. A look at the political economy of terrorism tort litigation shows how this lawsuit is not merely an instance of terrorism laws potentially trampling human rights; it is also an aggressive assertion of a right to colonize, and to do so in peace and quiet.