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The Law and Political Economy Project
Essay

Defendants, United, Could Strike the State Blindsided

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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

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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

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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

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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.
Essay

The Merger of Government and Religion

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An alliance between religious and economic conservatives is playing a central yet overlooked role in the resurgence of concentrated economic power in America, resulting in the transfer of public funds, services, and decision-making away from more democratic institutions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of “government-religious hospitals”: these hospitals are state owned, yet religion permeates their halls, and faith dictates the care they offer. To mitigate the risk that these arrangements pose, we must make innovative use of LPE’s tools, including antitrust, public utility regulation, and public options.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: March 3, 2023

By LPE Editors

Jonathan Harris on consumer law as work law, Alyssa Battistoni & Matthew Robinson on Reconsidering Reparations, an upcoming LPE Conference(!!), a call for submissions from the JLPE, and new pieces from Sandeep Vaheesan, Dan Rohde, and others.
Essay

Can Consumer Law Protect Workers?

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A growing number of employers are relying on Training Repayment Agreement Provisions to discourage workers from quitting. Courts, meanwhile, have routinely rejected legal challenges that claim these agreements violate employment laws, such as wage-and-hour laws and non-compete limitations. There is, however, another legal mechanism to stop this harmful and mobility-restricting practice: consumer law. When firms treat workers as their consumers by selling them services and credit products, the workers become worker-consumers and consumer law becomes work law.
Essay

The Political Economy of NPU Law

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What happens when we stop generalizing about the economy from the starting point of the grain market, as neoclassical models all seem to, and start generalizing from the post office, or the operating system? That’s the kind of question that Networks, Platforms, and Utilities puts on the table, and it is a major accomplishment. From an LPE perspective, however, one might worry that the book’s current approach is insufficiently attuned to the “political” part of political economy.
Symposium

Beyond Privacy: Changing the Data Power Dynamics in the Workplace

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By generating huge data sets to feed increasingly sophisticated algorithms, workplace surveillance allows employers to extract even more value from their employees. Greater data protection rights provide one possible avenue to change these power dynamics. But if employees truly want to participate in the management of their data and tap into it as a source of value, they need to wield power over data collection systems through collective bargaining and shared workplace governance.

Symposium

Electronic Surveillance Is Short-Circuiting Employment and Labor Law

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Electronic surveillance and automated management should not be understood as merely imposing some new, discrete set of harms on workers. Rather, pervasive employee monitoring should be seen as fundamentally altering the employment context in a way that threatens a wide range of employment and labor law protections. From worker safety, compensation, and classification to workplace discrimination and disability policy, policymakers and regulators must ensure that longstanding protections remain effective in the face of new technology.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: January 20, 2023

By LPE Editors

Barry Maguire on the alienation objection to efficient markets, Evelyn Atkinson on Telegraph Torts, and eight friends of the blog on the FTC’s proposed rule to ban non-compete agreements. Plus, a new citywide LPE group in NYC, a junior scholars workshop in NYC, an LPE reading group in Toronto, two great upcoming events, and Matt Stoller on l’affaire Hovenkamp.