Yearly Roundup: What We Published in 2021
By
Editors
A list of everything we published during this year of rest and relaxation.
Searching: courts
The Law and Political Economy Project
A Just Transition from Mass Incarceration: The Case of Abolishing Youth Incarceration in Los Angeles
A just transition for probation officers will never appeal to everyone. Nevertheless, it provides a potentially powerful framework for people who have experienced the dehumanizing mental and physical toll of working in the carceral state.
Building the New: Just Transitions & LPE
Just Transition calls us to center questions of justice and distribution in the fight for an ecologically sustainable future. This call resonates deeply with the core concerns of LPE.
LPE Originals
Yale Law LPE Student presents Supreme Court Reform After the Commission
By
LPE Editors
Last year, amid growing calls from liberals and the left for Supreme Court reform, then-candidate Joseph Biden committed to establishing “a national commission—a bipartisan commission—of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative, and I will ask them to, over 180 days, [to] come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of…
Implications of Cedar Point Nursery
Nikolas Bowie, Veena Dubal, and Amy Kapczynski discuss the potential implications of the Cedar Point Nursery for workplace democracy, as well as legal and non-legal strategies for overcoming this concerning turn in Takings Clause jurisprudence.
Taking a “Whole of Government” Approach to Pharma’s Monopoly Power
Americans pay excessively high prices for prescription drugs. To make medicines more affordable, the Biden Administration must confront the pharmaceutical industry’s monopoly power.
Fair Competition Policy without a Fair Competition Philosophy
By failing to articulate a vision of fair competition, the White House has delegated the task of moral exposition to its cabinet secretaries and agency leaders. This move may not prove fatal to the aspirations of antimonopolists, as some agencies are well positioned to do the work.
Interlocking Crises: Q&A on Global Debt in a Post-COVID World with Odette Lienau, Part 1
The LPE Blog asks Odette Lienau some questions about global debt in the wake of COVID-19, recent international initiatives to provide debt relief, and the rise of China as a major lender to sovereign states.
The Shaky Legal and Policy Foundations of Cost-Benefit Orthodoxy in Environmental Law
By
Amy Sinden
Neither Congress nor the Court have called for a one-size-fits-all approach to regulatory analysis, yet CBA continues to loom large in environmental policymaking. Agencies should reach for other tools that better capture the advantages and disadvantages of regulatory alternatives.
Using Legal Tools to Bring Debt and Equity into Balance
The Fair Housing Act, as written, provides several tools to challenge inequitable urban development. Yet the courts have been reluctant to enforce the law.
TransUnion Is a Double-Edged Sword: Should the Legal Left Wield It?
The logic of the Court’s recent TransUnion decision should make it harder, perhaps impossible, for corporations to enforce various forms of so-called “intellectual property” against competitors and the public. Could and should the legal left wield TransUnion for our own purposes?
Resilience Drainage and the Role of Private Law
By
Hila Keren
The laws that apply to market activities have long catered to the interests of seasoned market actors. Who, then, is to watch out for us lay market users?
Seven Reactions to the Eviction Moratorium Decision
Last week, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden Administration’s most recent moratorium on evictions. The decision, along with an anemic federal rental assistance effort, has put millions of people at risk of being removed from their homes. To offer our readers different ways into this important ruling, we asked Amy Kapczynski, Nikolas Bowie, Tara…
LPE Field Guide: A Brief Reading List
As we promised in our post on Monday, below is a list of recommended readings—mostly, but not entirely, from the blog—that helped orient us to the critical and constructive moves of LPE. Our choices are highly partial and subjective, and there is a vast literature on the Blog and elsewhere that can help to orient…
Law and Political Economy: A (Very) Brief Field Guide for 1Ls
Two 3L LPE fans (and Blog editors) reflect on what LPE has to offer to new law students.