An LPE Reading List and Introduction to Neoliberalism. What is “neoliberalism”? What sorts of institutions and ways of thinking characterize the “neoliberal era”? How might law reflect commitments of neoliberalism in different domains—in, for example, employment discrimination, criminal law, international trade, or welfare reform? This introduction offers a broad overview ofthe concept and the scholarly…
This bibliography was developed collectively by the LPE Racial Capitalism Working Group which includes: Amna Akbar, Abbye Atkinson, LaToya Baldwin Clark, Veena Dubal, Carmen Gonzalez, Kaaryn Gustafson, Angela Harris, Cheryl Harris, K-Sue Park, Daria Roithmayr, Karen Tani, and Noah Zatz.
An LPE Reading List & Introduction to Legal Realism. Legal realism was a movement in legal thought that began, roughly, in the late 19th century and flourished alongside Progressivism in the first decades of the 20th. It challenged formalist laissez-faire approaches to the law and called for a jurisprudence more consciously attuned to social realities…
Much of legal scholarship and practice in recent decades has held politics and economics apart, abstracting away from, or actively denying, their interdependence. Law schools and legal scholarship are organized along an implicit divide between “public” and “private” fields of law which is defined in significant part by the role that economics is thought to…
What are the affects of class and where does intimate labor fit into Marxist notions of use and exchange value? Is commodification and decommodification gendered? How does an intersectional perspective illuminate such processes as the wage? What is the sex of class and the class of pleasure? This graduate seminar explores that which economist and…
This seminar revisits the foundations of American Property law by examining its precepts and some seminal cases in the contexts of conquest and gentrification. More specifically, it explores the relation between historical processes of commodifying land in the U.S. and the creation of mechanisms for dispossessing and displacing the people who inhabit it. By examining…
We consider how technology has interacted with law, politics, ideology, and culture to bring us to our present state, and project these dynamics forward. We will consider whether technologies like robotics, platforms, or 3D printing will further exacerbate inequality, or whether they can be harnessed toward producing arrangements conducive to broad-based economic security. How do these interact with grand reform programs like a universal basic income or a universal jobs guarantee?
This class covers a range of poverty law issues. It begins with coverage of how poverty is measured, the major themes in poverty law, and the most important constitutional law cases. It then covers a number of specific issues: welfare, work, housing, health, education, criminalization, and access to justice. It ends by covering the relationship…
We will focus particular attention on three major themes of particular relevance today: speech, privacy, and power. The course has a particular focus on themes of corporate, governmental, and technological control of the Internet, and the effects on equality, free expression and user privacy. Course readings will highlight these themes and place legal developments in a broader theoretical context.
The Legal Construction of 21st Century Capitalism. How does law construct inequities of economic opportunity and power? How have changing ideas of political economy shaped law and public policy-and in turn, 20th and 21st century capitalism- over time? What are the normative and historical foundations for todays movements for structural racial and economic justice? What…
It is common today to speak of a “crisis of democracy.” What do the rise of nationalism and populism, the renewal of socialism, and other recent developments reveal about twenty-first century democracy and its relationship to economic order, constitutionalism, and the rule of law? This course draws on political theory, political science, and legal scholarship…
Many of us came to law school interested in how the law can advance justice, only to find ourselves disoriented by a first-year curriculum seemingly uninterested in and often hostile to these questions. This syllabus is a suggestion of readings organized around the 1L Curriculum aimed to challenge various assumptions underlying the law. Instead of…
This syllabus was designed by Luke Herrine & Kate Redburn for the Yale Law LPE Student group. The purpose of this reading group is twofold: First, the group is intended to provide participants with a survey of major movements in 20th century American legal thought regarding the relationship between democracy, legal change and political economy,…
Law facilitates and enforces private transactions, enforcing contracts, encouraging competition, requiring disclosure. How does law construct “market” and how do market dynamics influence law? How might law and public policy be reformed to address concerns like inequality and corporate power, while promoting values like economic dynamism, inclusion, and welfare? This seminar explores these themes by…
Rival ideas about property rights and liberty are at the heart of the ways in which market economies are legally structured. However as Abraham Lincoln said: “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing . . . The shepherd drives the wolf from the…