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LPE Originals

The Indian Country Abortion Safe Harbor Fallacy

In response to the likely fall of Roe, commentators have suggested that tribal lands might serve as safe harbors for abortion in conservative states. While tribes ought to possess the territorial authority to regulate reproductive healthcare as they see fit, this proposal overlooks important legal, financial, political, and ethical considerations that make the prospect of such safe harbors unlikely.

LPE Originals

Procedural Political Economy

Civil procedure is the infrastructure of democracy, allowing the public to interpret, elaborate, and entrench constitutional-regulatory commitments over time. Rather than sidelining courts entirely, a revival of the democracy-of-opportunity tradition should include a progressive vision of procedure.

LPE Originals

Democracy, Bureaucracy, and Rights

“It is not true that the U.S. Constitution has little to say about our economic rights and liberties – let alone our material welfare. Instead, as Fishkin and Forbath argue convincingly, the Constitution has nourished a democracy-of-opportunity tradition that places our equal social rights front-and-center in constitutional practice and politics.”

LPE Originals

American Social Democracy and Its Imperial Roots

The historical high-tides for the domestic experience of democracy-of-opportunity have occurred during periods of territorial and global expansionism. A serious effort to recover this tradition entails engaging with its imperial dimensions.

LPE Originals

State, Economy, & LGBTQ+ Civil Rights

We live in a condition in which capital drives significant social reforms while also undermining their impact and longevity by leaving destabilizing matters of economic inequality unaddressed. From this perspective, current LGBTQ+ victories are built on a shoddy foundation.

LPE Originals

On Judging Cases in the Context of Crisis

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…

LPE Originals

Courts and Constitutional Political Economy

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.

LPE Originals

School Segregation, Social Closure, and the Anti-Monopoly Analogy

In my new article, Monopolizing Whiteness, I examine the causes and consequences of “white island districts,” i.e. those that enroll predominantly white and affluent student bodies, despite being in racially and economically diverse metropolitan areas. I theorize that white student segregation in districts like GPSD is a product of (what sociologists refer to as) social closure— a process of subordination whereby an in-group works to curtail an out-group from accessing resources constructed as scarce. I suggest that the “essential facilities” framework of antitrust law can help to illustrate what a legal framework looks like that could appropriately recognize and address the process and harms of social closure.