A collection of our favorite posts about the legal underpinnings of today’s housing crisis, and about what might be done to restore a conception of housing as shelter, not commodity. Featuring Angela Harris, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, David Stein, Kathryn Sabbeth, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Klare, Tara Raghuveer, and more!
Recent Supreme Court decisions threaten to undermine administrative efforts to achieve housing justice, including the mandate to affirmatively further fair housing and a loan program that provides affordable rural rental housing to disadvantaged families.
Four Supreme Court decisions concerning the power of the administrative state have left agencies increasingly vulnerable to attack. Each decision is significant on its own, but together they underscore the precarious position of agency action today.
With summer just around the corner, are you looking to indulge in some juicy, page-turning scholarship? As always, the Blog has you covered with our biannual roundup of some of our favorite forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles.
The Trump Administration’s open rejection of due process and equal protection echoes some of the darkest aspects of antebellum America, when black Americans were frequently kidnapped and disappeared into the South without recourse. Yet this history also shows that direct legal representation can play a powerful role in mobilizing public opposition to unjust policies and proceedings.
The tech arm of Trump 2.0 isn’t just reshaping government — it’s consolidating control over the data infrastructure that makes modern governance possible. By centralizing data flows and gutting public information systems, DOGE is building the machinery for a new era of authoritarianism.
Many unitary executive proponents argue that federal labor rights undermine presidential power. This position is simplistic and short-sighted: labor rights offer the executive a different, more valuable form of power – expanded state capacity – that is necessary for modern presidents to deliver on their political priorities. And they so do in a manner that is more democratically accountable than any of the likely alternatives.
The Trump Administration’s anti-trans policies should be seen as central, rather than peripheral, to the creation of what Melinda Cooper has called “an anti-social state” — a state that would abandon every duty to serve its citizens and residents, whose sole purpose would be to amplify presidential executive power.
Offshore jurisdictions don’t just hide wealth — they enable the climate crisis by shielding the fossil fuel industry from taxes, environmental regulation, and political accountability. The Caribbean’s role as a hub for regulatory havens underscores the deep entanglement between colonial extraction, global capitalism, and environmental degradation.
Amid growing federal attacks, public sector workers can’t count on the courts for protection. Instead, they should take inspiration from the trade unionists who organized before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act.
The Manhattan Institute’s obsessive focus on trans medicine is a part of its broader effort to erode public trust in medical professionals and federal health authorities.
Trump’s recent attacks on the judiciary are best understood as an effort to lay the groundwork for a gradual shift in public opinion — to normalize the idea that defying court orders is not only acceptable but maybe even expected among his base.
Recent executive orders have targeted federal grant funding, trans students, non-citizen students, DEI efforts, and pro-Palestinian activism. Eight legal experts explain what these orders purport to require, analyze what they actually require, and assess how colleges and universities ought to respond.
According to recent judicial decisions, the state can criminalize homelessness, ban abortion, and restrict gender-affirming care, all in the name of public health, yet it cannot mandate vaccines nor pause evictions. How should we understand this asymmetry, and how might we realign public health jurisprudence with the pursuit of equality?
If endowments are fundamentally creatures of restriction, they are also in smaller measure creatures of interpretation and discretion. Universities should use what flexibility they do have to stand up for their programs, employees, and students – for the core constituents in a mission-driven environment – in this time of unprecedented assault.
