The scourge of algorithmic wage discrimination, racial capitalism in the civil courts, and some LPE highlights from around the web, including David Pozen, Tim Barker, and an on-going symposium at Notice & Comment.
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.
Eight friends of the blog offer their initial reactions to the FTC’s proposed rule to ban non-compete agreements.
As we grapple with the law’s ability to address today’s most powerful corporations, one interesting yet largely forgotten set of cases can help us find our bearing: the “death telegram” cases. These suits involved claims for emotional distress against telegraph corporations for failing to deliver telegrams involving the death or illness of a family member. Astonishingly, nearly half the state courts that encountered these claims allowed them, in spite of the long-established common law rule that absent physical injury, mental anguish alone could not be recognized in law. This exception was justified, in part, because the companies were seen as “public service corporations” – a monopolistic business entity that controlled access to a vital public resource and had special emotional duties to its customers. What would it mean to revive such a conception of the corporation today?
Setting aside their habit of quoting Augustine, the post-neoliberal right can at times sound surprisingly like fellow travelers in their critique of the market. So how does their vision of life after neoliberalism differ from our own? And what does their arrival on the scene mean for the LPE movement?
Neoliberalism, we are increasingly told, has one foot in the grave. It is worth, then, thinking seriously about what comes next. What paradigms might replace it, or give it one more mutated form? One possibility, gaining attention in mainstream progressive policy circles, is what some call “productivism” or “supply side liberalism.” But will a focus on production really address the fundamental problems with our political economy? And to what extent does this supposedly new version of industrial policy move us beyond the governing vision that defined neoliberalism itself?
Caroline and James highlight some of their favorite posts from 2022.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens: Matt, Ann, & Brett highlight some of their favorite posts from 2022.
From Antitrust to the Young Lords: a list of everything we published in the past year.
Seven friends of the blog offer their initial reactions to the FTC’s recent policy statement on unfair methods of competition.
Helen Hershkoff and Luke Norris on the Oligarchic Courthouse, Missy Risser-Lovings on training students to partner with grassroots organizing groups, and Stephanie Campos-Bui on the use of creative, non-litigation strategies to address systemic racial, economic, and social injustice. Plus, an upcoming event on Jamie Martin’s The Meddlers, two CFPs, and the coolest job in Western Massachusetts.
Many of us went to law school in the hopes of acquiring the tools necessary to contest and overhaul systems of oppression that have harmed our families and communities. The law, as we saw it, was the means or site of resolution. Yet for the increasingly complex and interconnected social problems that face our communities, traditional means of lawyering through direct services and litigation are often insufficient and ill-fitting. By taking an interdisciplinary approach, Berkeley’s Policy Advocacy Clinic is able to locate creative, non-litigation strategies to address systemic racial, economic, and social injustice.
Subject matter jurisdiction isn’t the dry, technical topic you think it is! Two civil procedure scholars argue that jurisdiction battles are central to corporate efforts to slant litigation and enforcement in service of corporate actors.
Every year, the American family policing system separates roughly half a million children from their parents. This system, though long overlooked, is increasingly being recognized for what it is: a way to control and terrorize politically marginalized communities. To date, however, challenges to family policing have largely focused on state agencies as the primary actors in this system, and courtrooms as the primary battleground, while paying less attention to other driving forces like capitalism, public-private relationships, and the powerful investigative and administrative structures in which the judicial venue is nested. Taking the lead from abolitionist’s broader work that seeks to fundamentally re-draw relationships and the distribution of resources, law school clinics should similarly expand their advocacy beyond now well-trod legal paths.
SAQ week at the blog, featuring Ntina Tzouvala on Marxism and international law, Wendy Brown and Amy Kapczynski on democracy, and Veena Dubal on essentially dispossessed workers. Plus, a new site on progressive competition policy, an interview with Karen Levy, and how ex-twitterati can keep up with the blog.
