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LPE Originals

Organizing In The Shadow Of The Law

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Tenant unions, unlike labor unions, operate without extensive federal, state, or local legislative schemes governing their form and behavior. This does not mean, however, that they are unaffected by the law. By looking at tenant unions at work in Kansas City, Chicago, and New York City, we can see the different ways in which law influences their form, tactics, and strategies to scale advocacy.
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

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

On Fascism: An Afrikan Perspective

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While current analyses of fascism tend to focus on interwar Europe, for George Jackson and other political prisoners, fascism represented the general tendency of the capitalist class to destroy revolutionary consciousness wherever it threatened the established economic order. On this view, rather than being a twentieth-century ideology, fascism was already present in the practices of colonialism and enslavement.
LPE Originals

Enough! The Spanish Fight to Limit Housing Speculation

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Throughout Spain, social movements are fighting against a chronic housing crisis caused by an influx of tourists and international capital. In this struggle, law is often a reflection of the existing neoliberal power structure, but with the support of sustained popular mobilizations, it has also served as a tool for emancipation.
LPE Originals

Tunisia: A Case Study in Democratic Backsliding

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Once hailed as a beacon of democratic hope, Tunisia has rapidly descended into autocracy over the past three years. The failure of its decade-long democratic transition offers crucial lessons for democracies old and new in this era of rising authoritarianism.
LPE Originals

Movement Lawyering in Times of Rising Authoritarianism

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In a time of rising authoritarianism and neoliberal hegemony, movement lawyers understand that the law and legal institutions primarily serve to protect capitalism, rather than everyday people. Nevertheless, as this symposium will show, from Argentina and Brazil to Palestine, Spain, and Tunisia, movement lawyers are devising creative legal tactics in defense of democracy, pluralism, and self-determination.
LPE Originals

All Power To The Tenants

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Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis’ new book, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis, is both a polemic and a guide. Drawing on their experiences organizing with the Los Angeles Tenants Union, Rosenthal and Vilchis envision a world where tenants control housing – a liberatory horizon that legal scholars, lawyers, and law students alike have a clear role to play in reaching.
LPE Originals

From the Vault: LPE & History

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The blog post is never dead. It’s not even post. We reach into the vault and highlight some of our favorite posts on LPE and history, featuring K-Sue Park, Luke Herrine, Gabriel Winant, Johanna Fernández, Aziz Rana, Vanessa Ogle, Evelyn Atkinson, William Forbath and Joseph Fishkin, Claire Dunning, Beryle Satter, and Uʻilani Tanigawa Lum and Kaulu Luʻuwai.