The SEC’s recent effort to rescind a longstanding shareholder-proposal rule reveals a novel strategy for entrenching deregulatory policy: disclaiming the authority to regulate in the first place.
In Katharina Pistor’s penetrating diagnosis, the law that constitutes capitalism spreads like a virus, and the only plausible cure is a new code of just private law. If this is indeed the remedy, we must devise a treatment regimen, figure out how to administer it, and deal with any harmful side-effects.
In thinking about how to regulate AI as a public utility, there are two big questions: which layers of the AI stack warrant regulation, and which tools of public utility law are best suited to each layer?
To make medicines more affordable, policymakers are increasingly turning to price controls and out-of-pocket caps. These measures, while lowering costs, leave decisions about which drugs to manufacture and distribute in private hands. If patients are to have reliable access to the medicines they need, the government must take on a more direct role in development, production, and provision.
To protect customers from rising electricity prices, public officials are urging data center developers to supply their own power. But this approach risks privatizing the power grid, worsening the climate crisis, and eroding electricity’s status as a public good.
The Association of Law and Political Economy invites proposals for its second annual meeting, to be held on June 9-10, 2027, in Boston, MA.
What the history of multilevel marketing can teach us about our political moment.
Employment discrimination law is primarily concerned with exclusion from good jobs. Yet this leaves unaddressed a corresponding problem: employers seeking out marginalized workers in order to reduce worker pay, degrade working conditions, and minimize the chance of unionization.
Contemporary proponents of law and economics claim to have abandoned the idea that law is an instrument for maximizing economic efficiency and wealth. Corporate law scholars haven’t yet heard the good news.
The rise of AI demands legislative action to mitigate its many risks. But rather than follow the same old regulatory playbook, Congress should instead embrace creative tax policy.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
The old school year is dying, and the new one struggles to be born: now is the time of movies.
Industrial policy will often require picking winners: if there were already many domestic firms capable of producing the desired output, there would be no compelling reason for subsidy or special treatment. Yet in doing so, the government risks locking in dominant firms and foreclosing the competition it ultimately needs. How might policymakers avoid this trap?
As policymakers pursue supply-side reforms to address rising housing costs, they must also confront a legal regime that affords tenants second-class status. Without confronting this anti-tenancy bias, abundance reforms risk producing more housing within the same inequitable framework.
The most pressing AI-driven crisis is the overestimation of AI’s capabilities and impacts, which has produced a historically large speculative AI bubble. To safeguard against this economic catastrophe, policymakers must confront and resist AI industry hype.
