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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
Rewriting the Laws of Capitalism
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Rewriting the Laws of Capitalism

When new constitutional orders came about in the 18th and 19th centuries, they left intact the private legal order that they inherited from feudalism, entrenching property rights and contracts as bulwarks against economic democracy. Reforming this system will require placing private law on a normative foundation that is compatible with democratic self-ordering.

Weekly Roundup: Oct. 9
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Weekly Roundup: Oct. 9

Two new entries in our LPE vs. Law and Economies series: James Tierney considers what LPE could want from a method, and Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel Lozada search far and wide for "contemporary" law and economics. Plus, an upcoming LPE Night School event on the NYC housing crisis, Sam Levine on governing AI for consumers and workers, Ben Kaufman on the scourge of the lower courts, Lenore Palladino on the potential of public credit funds, and Joel Michaels on how to restore Congress’s fiscal powers.

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Building and Balancing: Abundance and LPE in the “Block by Block”...

Can New York build its way out of the housing crisis? And when we build, how do we balance deliberation and delivery in democratic politics?  The LPE Night School series returns to CUNY Law with a panel on the New York City housing crisis. Amid demographic shifts and displacement, practitioners, advocates, and organizers will examine…

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Wherein Lies Contemporary Law and Economics?

According to a recent defense of law and economics, contemporary practitioners have abandoned the idea that law should maximize economic efficiency and wealth. To test this claim, three economists reviewed twelve major law and economics textbooks.