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The Law and Political Economy Project
Symposium

Capitalism & Disability: A Symposium on the Work of Marta Russell

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The modern disability rights movement has been primarily oriented around seeking labor inclusion through the expansion of civil rights statutes. Despite this, few disability theorists have approached the study of disability from an explicitly political economic perspective. Marta Russell, the author of several groundbreaking but lesser-known works on disability and capitalism, is one of the rare exceptions. This symposium celebrates her work and encourages the rediscovery of the political economy of disability.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 23, 2022

By LPE Editors

Luke Herrine discusses student debt cancellation and the politics of legal interpretation, Lisa Heinzerling reflects on the persistence of the economic style in regulatory policy, and Erik Peinert argues that the economic style has provided cover for fundamentally reactionary arguments. Plus, a forthcoming event with Sara Nelson & Amy Kapczynski!
Symposium

Thinking like a President

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For fifty years, presidents of both parties have offered a vision of regulatory policy that takes the economic style of reasoning as its North Star. Republican and Democratic presidents have differed, however, in their willingness to sacrifice economic purity when it disrupts their larger policy agendas. While Republican administrations have tended to ignore this criterion when it doesn’t align with their political priorities, Democratic presidents have been more foolishly consistent.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 16, 2022

By LPE Editors

Frank Pasquale considers what could replace the “economic style,” Landon Storrs tells the darker history behind the rise of the “economic style,” and Alvin Velazquez explains why the NLRB needs to adopt a more protective joint employer standard. Plus, an LPE event on torts you won’t want to miss!
Essay

When Labor Law Protects Corporate Interests Better than Corporate Law Does

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The prevailing joint employer standard requires a showing of greater control than state-based corporate law requires when applying traditional concepts of agency law to parent-subsidiary and franchisor-franchisee relationships. As a result, the current standard leaves millions of workers without meaningful collective bargaining rights because companies that “call the shots” avoid getting called to the bargaining table. Thankfully, this past week, the Board issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that signals the NLRB’s desire to return to a more protective standard.

Symposium

When It Comes to the History of Economics, Don’t Think like an Economist

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In charting economists’ pernicious influence on public policy, Beth Popp Berman contrasts an “economic style,” which focuses on efficiency, choice, and competition, with an alternative approach that favors equality, stability, and democratic participation. But that framing is not faithful to the actual debates that took place, out of which the economic style achieved its dominance, because it gives no account of the alternative economic views and theories that were displaced.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: July 22, 2022

By LPE Editors

An LPE account of the global food crisis, two new entries in our symposium on Coerced, an amazing LPE job at HLS, a symposium on William Novak’s New Democracy, and some podcast episodes to help digest the Supreme Court’s most recent term.

Symposium

Status As Sword

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While employers have long conflated status with vulnerability, workers are starting to show how status itself can also be as a source of power — one that the courts, co-workers, and the public increasingly see as justification for broad-based change.
Symposium

Labor Coercion and the Status/Economy Distinction

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Employers wield power over workers by virtue of control over their institutional status and not solely, or even principally, by virtue of the power to cut off wages. Yet, in attempting to distinguish “status” and “economic” coercion, we must avoid the idea that status is implicitly non-economic and the economy operates apart from the social.
Symposium

Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment

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Economic coercion is not the only power dynamic that shapes labor relations. In a range of cases – including prison laborers, welfare workers, college athletes, and graduate students – employers exercise power over workers by controlling their “status” and all of the rights, privileges, and opportunities that such status confers.
Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: July 8, 2022

By LPE Editors

A call for courage in the wake of West Virginia v. EPA, a reckoning with the arc of the American rights tradition, and a discussion of what it would take to build worker and union power in the 21st century economy. Plus, an upcoming all-star Antimonopoly event and a recently released state-level antimonopoly reform guide.