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.
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.
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.
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.
Javier Milei aims to dismantle the welfare state and eradicate left-wing social movements. To what extent can the law stop him?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Zohra Ahmed on the role that criminal fines and fees play in financing the state, Miguel Ruiz on the role of law and social movements in the fight against Spain’s chronic housing crisis, and Matthew Glover and Joshua Ingram on fascism from an Afrikan perspective. Plus, a call for (your!) recently accepted LPE scholarship, an internship with the Movement Law Lab, a workshop on the LPE of Social Reproduction, new articles by Nicole Summers and Alyssa Battistoni, an analysis of Trump’s likely judicial appointments, and a look at the new lobbying industry spawned by economic sanctions.
Throughout Spain, social movements are fighting against a chronic housing crisis caused by an influx of tourists and international capital. In this struggle, law is often a reflection of the existing neoliberal power structure, but with the support of sustained popular mobilizations, it has also served as a tool for emancipation.
As neoliberal attacks on progressive taxation emptied public coffers, states and municipalities increasingly turned to fines and fees to generate revenue. More fundamentally, criminal punishment became a necessary correlate to a state that must enforce property rights against an ever-growing multitude.
In a time of rising authoritarianism and neoliberal hegemony, movement lawyers understand that the law and legal institutions primarily serve to protect capitalism, rather than everyday people. Nevertheless, as this symposium will show, from Argentina and Brazil to Palestine, Spain, and Tunisia, movement lawyers are devising creative legal tactics in defense of democracy, pluralism, and self-determination.
The LPE Blog goes worldwide, bringing you some of our favorite global LPE and LPE-adjacent scholarship from 2024.
Doron Dorfman is a Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School. His research and teaching focus on health law, disability law, employment law, torts, and family law. His work has won multiple writing awards, was cited by federal courts, and was featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Professor…
