In This Brave New World, Does Scholarship Still Matter?
If the recent past is no longer a useful guide to seeking change in the present, what good is policy-adjacent scholarship?
Searching: courts
The Law and Political Economy Project
America’s First Religious Public School?
This past Friday, the Supreme Court granted cert in a case that concerns the first religious charter school in the United States. But this case is not merely about school choice or religious freedom — it also reflects a broader contest over how law structures public responsibility and private power.
The TikTok Ban and the Limits of the First Amendment
The Supreme Court’s unanimous affirmation of the TikTok Ban reveals a dangerous weakness in the First Amendment: its failure to protect against government repression that targets the economic infrastructure of speech, rather than speech itself — precisely the kind of repression that is likely to be a hallmark of the second Trump presidency.
LPE Originals
Sticking Together in Tough Times with Dean Spade
By
LPE Editors
Please join the LPE Project on Thursday, January 30th, from 12:10 to 1:30 PM ET, for a lunch talk with Dean Spade titled Sticking Together in Tough Times. Dean Spade is a Professor at Seattle University School of Law, where he teaches courses in Administrative Law, Poverty Law, Gender and Law, Policing and Imprisonment, Professional…
Presidents Are Strong, But Super-Groups Can Be Stronger
Is the power wielded by interests groups ultimately good or bad? To answer this question, we need to distinguish ordinary interest groups from super-groups, like the American Medical Association, whose legal empowerment makes them legitimate targets for democratic contestation and provides a principled basis on which to assess their political influence.
Weekly Roundup: Dec. 13
By
Editors
Beau Baumann and James Goodwin on the LPE of Congress, Shai Karp on landlords as petty tyrants, and a listicle of our favorite LPE posts on technology. Plus, Tara Raghuveer and Ruthy Gourevitch on tenant unions, Suzanne Kahn on feminist progressive populism, good news from the trenches of the EPA and FTC, Alvin Velazquez on bankrupt cities and federal disaster spending, and new book symposia at Legal Form and the American Political Economy Blog (inside you there are two wolves).
Rent Strikes as a Righteous Form of Resistance
By
Shai Karp
Landlords wield significant power over tenants — including the power to set prices, surveil, neglect, harass, and evict — while legal processes offer little to tenants in terms of protection or means of redress when their rights are violated. Withholding rent in response to mistreatment is one righteous way of resisting such domination.
What Does LPE Have to Say About Congress?
In recent years, the LPE movement has generated compelling positions on the limits of the courts and the promise of the administrative state. Yet it is striking how little it has had to say about about legislative procedure and politics. By focusing on how power can be durably built in Congress, LPE scholars could help envision democratic alternatives to our current institutional doom spiral.
Between Slavery and Incarceration: an Interview with Christopher Muller
An expert on the history of mass incarceration explains why the Black incarceration rate was lower in the South than in the North for much of the 20th century, why recent decades have witnessed rising class inequality in prison admission rates, and why functionalist explanations of incarceration often cloud our scholarly and political thinking.
How Bankruptcy Prioritizes Property Rights Over Public Good
After a recent First Circuit decision, private creditors’ bankruptcy rights pose an existential threat to the only electric utility in Puerto Rico. As this outcome shows, we need a new approach to balancing the interests at stake in bankruptcy proceedings — one that protects private property, but not at the expense of undermining major public goods.
Popular Lawyers Resisting the Right-Wing Agenda in Argentina
Javier Milei aims to dismantle the welfare state and eradicate left-wing social movements. To what extent can the law stop him?
(Some of) the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship
By
Editors
With the fall 2024 submission season 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, labor, housing, admin law, family law, consumer protection, legal theory, local government law, and so much more, this scouting report is not to be missed.
Are Major Housing Regulations Possible in a Post-Chevron World?
Faced with increasingly dire housing challenges, tenants and organizers have called on federal administrative agencies to impose rent regulations, curb discriminatory screening practices, and limit the grounds for eviction. But will such regulations survive in a post-Chevron world? And, if not, might they nevertheless serve long-term fair housing goals?
Have You Heard the Good News About Consumer Protection?
By
Luke Herrine
Recent years have witnessed a sea change in consumer protection, ushered in by a new generation of enforcers who reject many of the basic premises from the neoliberal era. They aim not merely to ensure that consumers have the information necessary to discipline firms through choice, but to prevent businesses from using their power to shape markets in ways that take advantage of consumers.
Seven Perspectives on International Law and Palestinian Liberation
Rabea Eghbariah, Noura Erakat, Darryl Li, Aslı Bâli, Diala Shamas, Maha Abdallah, and Shahd Hammouri share their thoughts on how international law hinders Palestinian liberation, and how might it be used—or how must it transform—to contribute to it.