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Law & Political Economy

LPE project

The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project brings together a network of scholars, practitioners, and students working to develop innovative intellectual, pedagogical, and political interventions to advance the study of political economy and law. Our work is rooted in the insight that politics and the economy cannot be separated and that both are constructed in essential respects by law. We believe that developments over the last several decades in legal scholarship and policy helped to facilitate rising inequality and precarity, political alienation, the entrenchment of racial hierarchies and intersectional exploitation, and ecological and social catastrophe. We aim to help reverse these trends by supporting scholarly work that maps where we have gone wrong, and that develops ideas and proposals to democratize our political economy and build a more just, equal, and sustainable future.

About The LPE Project Read the LPE Blog
Our Work

Learn

A variety of resources designed to help faculty and students learn more about LPE, including syllabi from LPE and LPE-related courses, primers on topics such as neoliberalism and legal realism, as well as videos from a number of events we have held over the last year.

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Engage

Information about the amazing work being done by LPE student groups, as well as guidance on starting a student group on your own campus! A bureau of affiliated professors and practitioners designed to help faculty and students to bring LPE scholars to their campuses!

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Events

A compendium of upcoming (and past) events put on by the LPE Project, LPE student groups, and other organizations in the LPE ecosystem.

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Recent Updates
Weekly Roundup: Oct. 23
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Weekly Roundup: Oct. 23

Omer Ein-Habar on the original sewer socialists, Ioannis Kampourakis on law as a produce force, and Yochai Benkler on the legal transformation of capitalism. Plus, ALPE announces its inaugural Junior Faculty Forum, the JLPE is looking for book reviewers, the LPE stream of the upcoming SLAS annual conference is accepting submissions, Asad Ramzanali identifies 34 ways to tax AI, Adam Bonica & Jake Grumbach discuss democracy's death by consultancy, and Kate Jackson reflects on Friedrick Pollock and Franz Neumann.

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The Stakes of Law as a Productive Force

What follows, politically, from the idea that law is constitutive of capitalism? What theories of social change does this view make available, where does it locate possibilities for political agency, and what kinds of political energies might it unleash?

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The Legal Infrastructure of Sewer Socialism

As cities across the country fight to take back control of their utilities, Milwaukee’s Sewer Socialists demonstrate what cities can achieve through local ownership, and why state regulation often serves private interests over the public good.