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.
LPE project
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.
Go to LearnEngage
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!
Go to EngageEvents
A compendium of upcoming (and past) events put on by the LPE Project, LPE student groups, and other organizations in the LPE ecosystem.
Go to Events
On Tariffs and the Ends of International Economic Law
For decades, the rules of international trade helped cement U.S. firms at the top of global value chains. Should Trump's unapologetic embrace of tariffs be understood as part of a broader loss of faith in those rules among American policymakers? Or is it something else entirely — a bid to remake the relationship between capital and political power within the United States itself?
Antimonopoly and Artificial Intelligence
While debate over AI regulation in the United States has largely focused on safety, the future of AI progress will also be determined by market structure. To ensure continued innovation, policymakers must use antitrust tools to protect competition at all levels of the supply chain — from hardware and cloud infrastructure to models hubs and consumer applications.
How Anti-Trans Attacks Forge the Anti-Social State
The Trump Administration's anti-trans policies should be seen as central, rather than peripheral, to the creation of what Melinda Cooper has called “an anti-social state” — a state that would abandon every duty to serve its citizens and residents, whose sole purpose would be to amplify presidential executive power.
Fossil Capital’s Regulatory Havens in the Carribean
Offshore jurisdictions don’t just hide wealth — they enable the climate crisis by shielding the fossil fuel industry from taxes, environmental regulation, and political accountability. The Caribbean’s role as a hub for regulatory havens underscores the deep entanglement between colonial extraction, global capitalism, and environmental degradation.