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LPE Originals

Anti-Domination and the Future of Progressive Administration

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The Trump administration is simultaneously dismantling, weaponizing, and centralizing state capacities in order to enact a reactionary vision of administration — one which seeks to roll back efforts by prior generations to equalize economic and social relations. In contrast to this vision, progressives ought to aspire to a regulatory state whose purpose is to prevent domination. This alternative vision can guide us in deciding which forms of administrative power we should build and which we should actively work to restrain.
LPE Originals

From the Vault: LPE & Administrative Law

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A collection of our most illuminating posts on administrative law and democratic governance, featuring Sabeel Rahman, Karen Tani, Sophia Z. Lee, Kate Jackson, Daniel Walters, Blake Emerson, and more.
LPE Originals

The Political Economy of the Current Crisis

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The current constitutional crisis offers a new picture of what legitimate government looks like: rule by the boss, where professional civil servants become at-will employees, the threat of prosecution is just another bargaining chip, and statutory, constitutional, and ethical restraints are treated as tokens in a sucker’s game.
LPE Originals

How Antipoverty Advocates Can Go On The Offensive

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In the embers of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Grants Pass decision, a new form of necessity doctrine offers a ray of light. If private property owners’ exclusionary rights are meaningfully threatened, might the political will for ending homelessness and food insecurity finally emerge?
LPE Originals

On Writing Down Our Dreams During a Living Nightmare

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When it’s time to rebuild from the wreckage of the Trump-Musk rampage, the left may have the opportunity to implement a truly transformative agenda. However, unless we have relatively detailed proposals ready in advance, we will lose out to those who merely want to reproduce what came before.
LPE Originals

The Institutional Neutrality Trap

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An increasing number of universities want to restrict their leaders from speaking about issues of public concern. This push for “neutrality” is a key piece of a broader conservative campaign to suppress speech that conservatives don’t like. It also offers a lesson about what we can expect of powerful institutions in the second Trump era.
LPE Originals

Presidents Are Strong, But Super-Groups Can Be Stronger

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Is the power wielded by interests groups ultimately good or bad? To answer this question, we need to distinguish ordinary interest groups from super-groups, like the American Medical Association, whose legal empowerment makes them legitimate targets for democratic contestation and provides a principled basis on which to assess their political influence.
LPE Originals

Rent Strikes as a Righteous Form of Resistance

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Landlords wield significant power over tenants — including the power to set prices, surveil, neglect, harass, and evict — while legal processes offer little to tenants in terms of protection or means of redress when their rights are violated. Withholding rent in response to mistreatment is one righteous way of resisting such domination.
LPE Originals

What Does LPE Have to Say About Congress?

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In recent years, the LPE movement has generated compelling positions on the limits of the courts and the promise of the administrative state. Yet it is striking how little it has had to say about about legislative procedure and politics. By focusing on how power can be durably built in Congress, LPE scholars could help envision democratic alternatives to our current institutional doom spiral.