The CUNY Law and Political Economy Collective (CUNY LPE) is a student-led group dedicated to subordinating law and legal practice to the project of building working-class power.
CUNY LPE works to identify the law’s role in facilitating capitalist accumulation at the expense of democratic self-rule, and to explore how the law might be reshaped to support a more just political economic order. We reject the distinction between public and private law and the idea that either the law or the market is in some way outside or prior to politics. Instead, we approach legal study and practice with an emphasis on questions of power, inequality, and democracy. This endeavor is grounded in our experiences as students proudly enrolled in New York City’s only public law school, and in the day-to-day struggle for economic, racial, gender, health, disability, and environmental justice.
CUNY LPE hosts reading groups to engage with LPE scholarship, supports student writers, and hosts speakers and panel events, including a recurring series of coffee chats with academics and practitioners from our community who talk about lawyering with an LPE lens. We also develop programs in conjunction with other leftist student groups, from panel talks to hubs for cross-campus organizing in pursuit of a fully funded CUNY and against austerity.
To get involved, please email cunylpecollective@gmail.com.