LPE Originals
Moving Environmental Politics Out of the Courts
Building a popular environmental movement will take longer than suing the government.
LPE Originals
Inequality and Political Economy in Constitutional Doctrine
By
Kate Andrias
Recently on this blog, Sabeel Rahman and Ganesh Sitaraman detailed the growing interest among public law scholars in questions of power, inequality, and political economy. One feature of the emerging scholarship, they correctly note, is that it directs its attention not primarily to courts, but to legislators and social movements; it focuses not primarily on…
LPE Originals
Beyond Access to Justice: Challenging the Neoliberal Roots of Hyper-Gentrification
By
John Whitlow
New York City recently became the first jurisdiction in the United States to guarantee a right to counsel for poor people at risk of eviction. This was an important step in the fight for equal access to the courts, and a significant victory for tenant advocates who had waged a decades-long campaign to ensure fairness…
LPE Originals
Building on the Fight For $15: Lessons from the West Virginia Strikers
By
Will Bloom
In a week chockful of major news about the American labor movement, no story has captured the imagination of workers and labor activists across the country like the West Virginia teachers’ strike. Despite having no legally protected right to strike or collectively bargain, and despite facing Republican control of both houses of the legislature and…
LPE Originals
Just Transitions?
“Either Way the Outlook is Dire, Especially for the Poor.” So concludes a journalist after reviewing a draft report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the environmental justice and human rights consequences of climate change. The 800-plus page report, which is not yet publicly available, details the effects of a 1.5 degree…
LPE Originals
The Movement for Black Lives Offers an Abolitionist Approach to Police Reform
By
Amna Akbar
For several years, I have been thinking about the rise of racial justice movements that account for political economy—specifically, those with anti-capitalist commitments. I am thinking of the Movement for Black Lives, and aspects of the immigrant justice movement. These social movements mark the revival of anti-capitalist racial justice politics in the United States in…
LPE Originals
The New Majority: Uniting the Old and New Working Class
This post picks up where Angela Harris and Noah Zatz left off in the conversation about race and class. The arguments in this post preview arguments I will be making in a new book, entitled “The New Majority.” It will surprise no one that I decided to write the book in November of 2016. So…
LPE Originals
Why Civil Disobedience, and Why Now?
On December 5th, I joined hundreds of people from 32 states in Washington D.C to protest the Republican tax bill. We packed the hallways outside of the offices of seven key members of Congress, and mic-checked one another so that people’s stories about the bill’s devastating consequences could be heard. A group of us –…
LPE Originals
Why “Intellectual Property” Law?
When I entered law school in 1999, I was primarily interested in two things: HIV/AIDS, and critical approaches to human rights. I was also young and queer, and Bowers v. Hardwick was the law of the land. Sodomy was illegal in many states, and so, it seemed, was I. So, I was also deeply interested…