LPE Originals
Post-Neoliberalism is the New Centrism
At a recent convening devoted to the death of neoliberalism, what emerged was less a rupture with the past than a centrist project of status-quo stabilization.
LPE Originals
The Business of Arson: An Interview with Bench Ansfield
An examination of the wave of landlord perpetrated arson in the Bronx during the 1970s presents an untold story of racial capitalism and financialization. Andrew Anastasi interviews Bench Ansfield about their book, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.
LPE Originals
LPE 2.0: A New Association to Meet the Times
As the Trump administration attempts to suppress critical inquiry and operate outside of conventional legal boundaries, the work of LPE scholars, organizers, and practitioners has never been more important. Join us in building the Association of Law and Political Economy (ALPE), a new membership-based organization for LPE work.
LPE Originals
The Dark Doppelganger of Affordable Higher Education
In the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the Trump administration included a brilliant bit of faux-populism: a five-year tuition freeze. The proposal creates the illusion that the right is taking decisive action to address affordability, while obfuscating its larger plan to abandon higher education as a public good. To prevent MAGA from outflanking and corrupting a popular left position, we must embrace ambitious solutions that will actually address the high cost of attending college.
LPE Originals
From Movement Lawyering to Prefigurative Lawyering: Living Out Liberatory Values Now
As the far right consolidates power at the federal level, many progressive lawyers are turning to state policy or crafting rebuilding plans for after the storm. Yet this moment also offers a chance to adopt a more radical orientation: prefigurative lawyering at the local level. According to this approach, we must create the world we want to live in now, working with movement partners in the co-creation of non-capitalist ecosystems based on care and cooperation.
LPE Originals
Can DEI Workers Strike Back?
Even as the Trump administration seeks to dismantle DEI in the name of “merit,” the law it distorts still harbors possibilities for resistance. Title VII prohibits retaliation against employees who oppose discrimination, and workers purged for their past DEI efforts should consider pursuing retaliation claims against their employers. Such lawsuits would raise the costs of anticipatory capitulation, while also providing some measure of relief to workers already harmed.
LPE Originals
The Corruption of Civil Rights and the Capitulation of Higher Ed
By weaponizing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the Trump administration is using antidiscrimination law to protect privilege and entrench inequality. Yet rather than uniting to resist these sham investigations, college and university leaders have acted in isolation, allowing fear and fragmentation to erode the principles at the heart of higher education.
LPE Originals
Movement Law Under Fascism
As fascist tendencies intensify across the United States, social movements continue to organize against the forces of state repression. Legal scholars must stand with these movements, grounding our analysis in struggle and supporting those fighting on the frontlines with our relative social power and institutional resources.
LPE Originals
The Rising Threat of Antisemitism Investigations
By
Darryl Li
In the fall of 2023, the Department of Education launched more antisemitism investigations into colleges and universities than in all previous years combined. This record was surpassed in 2024 and is on track to be broken again in 2025. While the Biden administration wielded these investigations as a cudgel to crush student-led protests in support of Palestine, Trump has turned them into a battering ram in his attempt to remake American higher education.
LPE Originals
How Conspiracy Law Threatens Social Movements
Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Trump and his allies have repeatedly threatened to use conspiracy laws against liberal groups, protesters, and political opponents. These threats reflect a troubling trend: prosecutors are exploiting the vague and expansive nature of conspiracy charges to attack the very relationships and forms of coordination that make social movements possible.
LPE Originals
Toward Labor Unions for Incarcerated Workers: An Organizing Strategy
Incarcerated workers are deeply embedded in the U.S. economy, yet they are excluded from basic labor protections and organizing rights. Traditional labor unions can and should bring these workers into the fold by organizing across prison walls and redefining the boundaries of worker solidarity.
LPE Originals
Why Not a Faculty Union?
Despite a recent surge in campus organizing, tenured faculty at private universities haven’t unionized. Why is this? The conventional answer is that the Supreme Court said they can’t. Fortunately, the conventional answer is wrong.
LPE Originals
Solidarity during the Second Red Scare: The Lessons of Thomas Emerson
Thomas Emerson is often remembered as a leading scholar of the First Amendment, but his deeper legacy lies in his defiant stand against political repression during the Second Red Scare. Looking back on his life, we can see valuable lessons about how to navigate the treacherous waters of political persecution and rising authoritarianism.
LPE Originals
Beyond The Ballot: Building The Movement Democrats Won’t
The MAGA movement has preyed on the economic decay and social malaise plaguing America’s neighborhoods, offering a suite of real and imagined villains to drive Trump’s ascension. The left must get back to basics, rebuilding the trust lost by the Democratic Party through genuine community building and connection across difference.
LPE Originals
Outrage and Resistance: Abolitionist Lessons for the Present Crisis
The Trump Administration’s open rejection of due process and equal protection echoes some of the darkest aspects of antebellum America, when black Americans were frequently kidnapped and disappeared into the South without recourse. Yet this history also shows that direct legal representation can play a powerful role in mobilizing public opposition to unjust policies and proceedings.