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The Unavoidable Consequences of Being Human
The Unavoidable Consequences of Being Human

The Unavoidable Consequences of Being Human

Next month, the Supreme Court will decide whether it is constitutional for cities to punish unsheltered people for sleeping outside, even when the city fails to provide any safe alternative. Sara Rankin explains what is at stake in this case, as well as how, in the wake of earlier rulings, cities have become more creative in their efforts to hide homelessness.

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The Vicious Spiral of Political and Economic Inequality

Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act, which slashed the highest marginal tax rate from 50 to 28 percent, was one of the largest and most regressive tax cuts in the history of the United States. New research shows that it also caused an increase in campaign contributions among the wealthy – demonstrating how rising economic and political inequality reinforce one another through public policy.

The Real Lessons We Should Draw from Claudine Gay’s Resignation

Free speech at universities hangs in the balance. But defending it will require much more than just resisting the assaults coming from billionaires and right-wing influencers. It will require reconnecting with the purposes and highest aims of the academy and building a political economy of higher education that can begin to truly deliver on them.

Emancipatory Horizons in Tenant Organizing

Earlier this year, a landlord presented a group of Kansas City tenants with the following choice: renew their leases at triple the rent or move. But rather than accept these terms, the tenants came together and declared “we won’t go.” This rejection of the options presented to them, originally a reflection of their desperation, soon became an expression of their power.

Who Cares About Efficiency?

Efficiency is a slippery term, and legal scholars frequently shift between distinct and even incompatible meanings as is convenient. This lack of clarity can inhibit students from challenging certain claims. To ask “but what do you mean by efficiency?” can make one appear unsophisticated or pedantic. But that’s precisely the question we should be asking. Because there are good reasons to reject the notions of “efficiency” usually taught in 1L classes, even if — in fact, precisely because — we have good reason to value other forms of efficiency.

What Law Clinics Left Behind

Though a familiar feature of legal education today, law clinics have a complex history. In the 1960s and 1970s, when student activists demanded curricular reform, law schools embraced clinics as a way to defuse the threat of student power. Looking back at this largely forgotten history helps illuminate the demands that were left behind, and demonstrates the need to reclaim the legacy of more militant student organizing.

Legal Theory in the Lowercase

The idea that LPE is lacking in legal theory, as Sam Moyn has recently claimed, depends on what counts as legal theory. If we take Legal Theory to be a subject that is defined by the Marxism-related anxieties of CLS, then LPE work is severely under-theorised. If, instead, we endorse an idea of legal theory without capitalisation – a way of writing about law that is explicit and explanatory about our assumptions – then many LPE scholars have been analytically generous in presenting their understanding of law and political economy, even if more remains to be done.

Recent

Weekly Roundup: March 15, 2024

Julieta Lobato on Milei’s labor governance, Evan Bernick on the role of the Constitution in freedom struggles, and Jonathan Glater & Adriana Hardwicke on the fracturing of higher education. Plus, the next session in our Courts open course, a call for recently accepted LPE-relevant articles, pieces on the destruction of the Covid social safety net,. . .

Radical Constitutionalism and a Critique of Nonviolence

The most important work of legal scholarship in some time, Jocelyn Simonson’s Radical Acts of Justice raises, but does not develop, two major sets of questions. The first concerns the role of the Constitution in freedom struggles; the second, the legitimate role (if any) of violence in transformative left politics in the United States.

The Necropolitics of Milei’s Labor Governance

Javier Milei’s labor policies in Argentina highlight two often overlooked features of contemporary capitalism: the emergence of new labor subjects and the role of violence in processes of labor precarization. This production of precarity serves as a mechanism for framing certain lives as disposable and bolsters illegal economies that are increasingly replacing. . .

Weekly Roundup: March 8, 2024

Zephyr Teachout discusses the democratic stakes of NetChoice, and Jocelyn Simonson kicks off a symposium on her recent book, Radical Acts of Justice. Plus, a lunch talk with Lina Khan (today!), two events on LPE & Civil Procedure, an event on student debt organizing, new books from Sandeep Vaheesan and Lenore Palladino, articles on. . .