I thank the Law and Political Economy Project for inviting me to participate in this blog symposium on capitalism and the courts. I begin by stating the obvious: that we live in a capitalist economic system and a political system that aspires to being democratic. There is clearly considerable tension between these systems. Most capitalists…
If history is any guide, the long-term solution when the courts are aligned against liberal and progressive causes is not to “reform” the politics out of the courts, but, rather, to confront the courts through politics itself.
If CLS was right to point out that law is a form of politics, why does the separation between law and politics exist and persist in our contemporary capitalist society, practically and institutionally if not conceptually?
To understand courts’ relation to the reproduction of economic domination requires close investigation of how they actually work for different types of litigants.