The LPE Project

Let me know if anybody is interested in a panel on reconstruction, constitutional politics, or LPE + history! 🙂

Today, @azohra.bsky.social and @brishen.bsky.social, co-chairs of the ALPE, share some exciting updates from the association.

Everyone from Sam Altman to Abdul El-Sayed have called for treating AI as a public utility. But what would this mean? One the country's leading experts in public utility regulation breaks it down. 👇

Today, @ganeshsitaraman.bsky.social offers a primer on how to think about public utility regulation and its tools—and how to apply them to different parts of the AI tech stack. lpeproject.org/blog/ai-as-a...

Can't remember the last time I enjoyed an online symposium this much: the dynamic, so far, between Pistor's post and @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social's is particularly interesting. Too bad I haven't gotten to Pistor's new book yet, because I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS!

🚨New programming alert! We're excited to announce the Law and Political Economy Junior Faculty Forum, to be held at the University at Buffalo School of Law on Thursday, July 22, 2027. If you are a pre-tenure, tenure-track faculty member, you can apply here: forms.gle/GJpqYrrdfeXU...

Weekly Roundup: 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, a junior faculty forum, a call for book reviews, democracy's death by consultancy, and more!

"Housing, healthcare, and similar reforms directly determine the degree of desperation that workers face and that forces them to sell their labor on pain of destitution... Decommodification of basic needs, freedom from want, is the precondition to any meaningful transformation of capitalism."

For those in the Boston area, don't miss the 2026 BU Law Review Conference on Presidentialism and the Escalation of Executive Power. Featuring panels on Presidentialism and Political Economy, Legal Interventions to Executive Overreach, Administrative Law, and much else! www.bu.edu/law/engageme...

Always a good day when the Blog features rival interpretations of the enclosure of the English commons.

Today, Yochai Benkler continues our symposium on Katharina Pistor's *The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform it.* To design the right program for capitalism’s legal transformation, he argues, we must begin with the right theory of capitalism.

"placing hope in lawyers as agents of social change is to a significant extent misplaced insofar as it fails to account for how their agency is itself constituted and constrained by structures in which historically sedimented relations of production and power are already inscribed."

Today, Ioannis Kampourakis considers 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?

Excellent lpeproject.org/blog/the-sta...

As another sewer dweller once said: Cowabunga!

Today, Omer Ein-Habar argues that as cities fight to take back control of local utilities, they should dust off the legal playbook of the original “Sewer Socialists.”

Week in review: @katharinapistor.bsky.social on the Law of Capitalism, and @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social on capitalism beyond law. Plus, some piping hot events, articles, and essay from around the web. 🧵

Grateful to @lpeblog.bsky.social for the opportunity to reflect on Pistor's work and to express my very Marxist doubts about legal institutionalism.

In considering Trump's delusions, it's too often overlooked that he literally worshipped at the altar of "Positive Thinking" as a child (Vincent Peale officiated his first wedding!), and that his own improbable life has given him every reason to believe in its power.

Today, @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social raises some doubts about the idea that capitalism is an irreducibly legal phenomenon.

Now on LPE blog - the core ideas of the book. Stay tuned for the comments followed by a replique

New working paper w/ @hannafolsz.bsky.social In 2025, Trump targeted US law firms for their political opposition Some firms resisted by suing Trump. Others folded by agreeing to support the administration w/ pro bono work Resisting firms took a short term financial hit but improved reputations

Today, @katharinapistor.bsky.social explains how three features of our private law—private legal empowerment, decentralized access to the centralized means of coercion, and legal arbitrage—allow capitalists to circumvent public regulation.

Weekly Roundup: @jamesftierney.bsky.social 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, as always, upcoming events, new articles, and essays from around the web. 🧵

Don't miss the next LPE NYC Night School event at CUNY Law on October 28th at 6:30pm! "Building & Balancing: Abundance & LPE in the "Block by Block" Era on the tension btwn calls for supply and demands for stability in NYC housing with John Mangin & Aissatou Barry. lpeproject.org/events/build...

If you know talented law students who would be interested in spending a summer working on the most important and interesting First Amendment cases, please send them our way! knightcolumbia.org/page/summer-...

TLDR:

"The way most students (future policy makers) learn about L&E is through its textbooks, and these textbooks continue to present Kaldor-Hicks efficiency as the goal of public policy. This presentation is not defensible on economic theory grounds because it is contradicted by modern welfare economics"

According to a recent defense of law and economics, contemporary practitioners have abandoned the idea that law should maximize economic efficiency. To put this claim to the test, Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel Lozada reviewed twelve major law and economics textbooks.

"Law and economics has a portable, teachable procedure that a student learns in a semester and carries into any field, generating determinate answers a differently situated analyst can check. That is a genuine achievement, and it is one reason for L&E’s diffusion in law over the decades."

The week in review: Marc Shkurovich on the case for public pharma, Katharina Pistor on the challenges of social democratic reform, and Yochai Benkler on taking social relations as the basic unit of analysis. Plus, the hottest podcast episodes, essays, and law review articles from around the web.

We concur! And for those with law and political economy (and adjacent) courses, it can even find a permanent home in our syllabi bank.

"In capitalism, social relations of production exert outsized force on all other domains, distorting and warping relations of reproduction, protection, and meaning-making without fully annihilating their internal capacity to structure relations in their distinct domains."

Today, Yochai Benkler concludes our symposium on "Structure and Legitimation in Capitalism," responding to Matthew Dimick, Jed Purdy, and Katharina Pistor. To understand the place of the state in capitalism, he argues, we must take social relations as the basic unit of analysis.

My response to Yochai Benkler‘s take on transforming capitalism. Sadly, we cannot count on the state

Today, @katharinapistor.bsky.social argues that any program of transformative change must reckon with the fact that capitalists have largely succeeded in de-legitimizing existing institutions, including the state itself.

"Across the world, insulin manufacturers have been shifting their production lines to GLP-1s, after entirely discontinuing some insulin products that were widely used and still profitable – just less profitable than GLP-1s."

Today, Marc Shkurovich explains why every US politician running on single-payer or universal healthcare should also be talking about public pharma.

In our latest, we speak with Nate Holdren @nhold.bsky.social about how the concept of “gerontocracy” points us away from structural conditions while at the same time reinforcing dominant ideas about disposability www.patreon.com/deathpanelpo...

We're pleased to share that @ambakak.bsky.social co-ED of @ainowinstitute.bsky.social will join @hellodcwp.bsky.social Commissioner @saalevine.bsky.social to discuss local AI governance with writer @edwardongwesojr.com next week. RSVP at governing-ai-for-nyc-workers-and-consumers.eventbrite.com

The week that was: Jed Purdy discusses law’s role in capitalism, while @meganwachspress.bsky.social explores how the data center boom risks privatizing the power grid. Plus, the hottest podcast episodes, essays, and law review articles from around the web.