Mainstream development discourse and practice has not paid adequate attention to the institutional dimensions of development. Further, legal academic research in India has almost completely ignored the role of law and legal institutions in India’s development. The belated recognition of the role and significance of institutions means that questions such as what institutions are, how…
Once regarded as engines of benevolent innovation, or even as global emissaries of democracy, big tech companies have lost their reputational luster in recent years. Their rise coincided with a historic decline in government action against market concentration and abuse of dominance. But now the gloves are off. Since 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice…
The first half of the course will offer an introduction to the intellectual origins and basic tools of law and political economy. The second half of the course will be based on a set of specific strategic interventions that will be selected for their political and social salience during the semester in which the course will be taught.
Legal education generally relies upon two unsustainable demarcations: first, it separates law from politics and economics and, secondly, it treats legal fields (contracts, constitutional law, property etc) separately from each other. Generally speaking, private law is equated with ‘economics’ and public law with ‘politics’. These demarcations are neither intellectually rigorous nor practically useful. For that…
This seminar introduces students to the field of “Law and Political Economy” (LPE) and explores current topics in LPE scholarship. LPE scholars are a diverse group whose work cuts across subject areas and methodologies. Nevertheless, LPE scholars tend to hold that “the economy” and “politics” are deeply interdependent—and yet that much legal doctrine, legal scholarship,…
This reading group, adapted from a reading list prepared by Brian Highsmith, will explore the relationships between race, place, and the law. Our goal is, per Highsmith, to understand the “institutional stakes of geography for distribution…focusing particularly on racial separation and subjugation in the United States” and the commodification of urban space. “Our readings will…
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…
The United States has a monopoly problem. Markets are increasingly concentrated across sectors, contributing to lower wages, higher prices, ballooning corporate profits, and political and economic inequality. In response, lawyers, policymakers, and activists are reimagining and reforming the legal foundations that undergird market organization. At the center of their focus lie antitrust law and regulatory…
This course examines the way the concepts of the law and state evolved during the first thirty years of the Soviet state, focusing on the intersections of revolution and evolution, politics and law, and terror and legality in the light of a detailed examination of primary and secondary sources.
How does American law treat transgender, genderfluid, nonbinary, agender, and gender- nonconforming people? What assumptions about gender operate in legal doctrines, and how do these assumptions interact with the lives of transgender people, especially those at the intersection of multiple axes of oppression? This seminar will discuss contemporary cases involving transgender rights, as well as…
Have you ever wondered what debt is, where it came from, and how it came to underpin American political economy? We’ll try to answer these questions and more in the Debt and Finance reading group. The group will meet on Zoom every two weeks to discuss readings on the origins of debt, the rise of…
This course will teach the principles of the lawyer as public citizen and the profession’s obligations to facilitate access to justice through a combination of readings,discussions, practice simulations, drafting exercises, and guest speakers. Major topics to be covered include the history of the provision of legal aid to the poor including the development ofcase law,…
This is a short research course designed for aspiring movement lawyers and students interested in social justice issues. Topics covered include the legal research process and its limitations, critical approaches to conducting legal research, critical legal scholarship, and emerging legal research technologies and their shortcomings.
This course offers an introduction to Political Economy, followed by units on “Law, Economy, & Labor,” “Law & Money,” and “Law, Nature, & the Pandemic”
This course explores the relationship between social justice and lawyers’ ethics. It examines theoretical and practical questions related to the core duties of the profession. The focus is how these duties work in tandem or in tension with social justice commitments.