The Columbia Law and Political Economy Society is the Law School’s student-led chapter of the national Law and Political Economy Project (LPE Project), dedicated to bringing together a network of scholars, practitioners, and students to develop innovative intellectual, pedagogical, and political interventions to advance the study and practice of the law.
We are an intellectual and social forum that allows Columbia students to critically examine the economic and political assumptions embedded in the law, and simultaneously, the role that law plays in creating and maintaining unjust hierarchies of class, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as ecologically unsustainable economic systems.
The Columbia LPE Society also hosts the Consumer Protection Working Group, a dedicated venue for students interested in creating safer, fairer, and more equitable marketplaces for consumer goods and services. Far too many companies predicate their business models on—and pad their profits by—taking advantage of hardworking consumers by means of outright fraud, deceptive practices, and exercising unfair leverage. We are students concerned by rapacious predatory lending, forced arbitration, abusive student loan servicing practices, and many other real-world issues in markets for consumer goods and services. The Working Group hosts panels and discussions with consumer advocates, government regulators, academics, and CLS students, alumni, and faculty.
The Columbia LPE Society welcomes the addition of future Working Groups to illuminate and address other areas of the law in which current institutional dynamics perpetuate an unjust and unacceptable status quo.
For more information about the Society, how to get involved, or to subscribe to our listserv to get updates about upcoming events, you may reach us by email at LPE@law.columbia.edu or on Twitter or Instagram.
