Today, Mason Kortz explains how FOIA’s Exemption 4 has evolved into a powerful tool for corporate secrecy, allowing government agencies and private firms to thwart transparency through confidentiality pacts. lpeproject.org/blog/public-...

Today, Jed Britton-Purdy continues our symposium on @alybatt.bsky.social's *Free Gifts.* To what extent, he asks, can a turn to politics make space for the ecological values that many of us want to take seriously?

"Climate change’s cause is truly social, and so the response to it must be as well. Struggling to avert climate catastrophe is one and the same with struggling to overcome capitalism...." lpeproject.org/blog/when-na...

The week in review: @alybatt.bsky.social on the free gifts of nature, @selfactingmule.bsky.social on value form theory and the accelerating climate crisis, and Reshard Kolabhai on what Africa might mean for thinking about LPE. Plus, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵👇

Today, Reshard Kolabhai lays out some lessons for LPE from the Global South. A focus on Africa, he argues, could helpfully destabilize our narratives about capitalist periods, our assumptions about the links between law and capitalism, and our understanding of progressive development policy.

In a new post for the @lpeblog.bsky.social, @solomonctryls.bsky.social Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow Elle Rothermich reflects on the potential limits of antitrust law as a tool to improve health care for terminally ill patients. lpeproject.org/blog/hospice...

Today, Rob Hunter (@selfactingmule.bsky.social) continues our symposium on @alybatt.bsky.social *Free Gifts,* explaining why capitalist subjects are incapable of valuing the ecological systems on our which existence depends, even as they collapse around us.

I wrote for @lpeblog.bsky.social about @alybatt.bsky.social's new book—which, I argue, shows how the critique of political economy can allow us to clearly name the social cause of climate catastrophe: capital. lpeproject.org/blog/when-na...

Don't miss Alyssa Battistoni's post about her excellent new book!!

Today, @alybatt.bsky.social kicks off a symposium on her book, *Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature* The idea of the free gift, she argues, can give us a deeper understanding of the environmental problems that plague capitalism. It can also help us better understand capitalism itself.

It’s a rainy morning in California, but our future is bright! ☀️ We are reveling in this incredible win for academic freedom and higher education. www.latimes.com/california/s...

The week in review: @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social on oligarchy and taxation, and Elle Rothermich on private equity and the commodification of hospice care. Plus, the best of Law and Political Economy from around the web, including new events, books, essays, and articles 🧵👇

A good day to revisit Eamonn Coburn's post from earlier this fall: Union Busting is (Morally) Disgusting.

Medicare's hospice benefit "was designed not to maintain a healthy market for hospice, but to disentangle hospice from market logic. To achieve this, we need to do more than merely stabilize the hospice industry through greater competition—we need to create spaces where care remains uncommodified."

Trump's tariffs are always described as chaotic. They aren't chaotic. They are part of a concerted attack on the rule of law. If you want to read about that at more length and with more penguins:

"Slaveholders also ensured that there was no effective bureaucracy for tax assessment. In Georgia, for example, property holders simply asserted the value of their estate and, by law, tax officials could not dispute the owner’s estimate."

"If a future government manages to roll back the current administration’s efforts to consolidate power but fails to rebuild our national tax capacity, it will be a hollow victory."

New from me today! An article at @lpeblog.bsky.social, about Trump's tariffs, Magna Carta, and why opponents of democracy always try to undermine the tax system. lpeproject.org/blog/the-lon... Also, I got to write this one sentence:

Apparently, it is negotiable!

✅ transformative vision for the city ✅ elect a democratic-socialist mayor 🔲 learn more abt the levers of municipal power If you're a NYer missing that last piece, join us Nov 19 at CUNY Law for an event with @sandynurse.bsky.social & @ngusdorf.bsky.social lpeproject.org/events/local...

Does suddenly having a real progressive mayor make you wish you knew a little more about how city gov actually works?? You're in luck! Join us Nov 19th as we talk to @sandynurse.bsky.social & @ngusdorf.bsky.social abt the levers of local power!!! lpeproject.org/events/local...

The week in review: Matthew Dimick on antitrust and the logic of capitalism, and @gshans.bsky.social on protecting legal clinics from political interference. Plus, the best of LPE from around the web, including new fellowships, reports, interviews, and articles 🧵👇

John Roberts now faces the ultimate heartbreak: deciding whether to keep polishing Donald Trump's boots or to continue his lifelong romance with America's corporate overlords.

Today, @gshans.bsky.social describes recent attacks on legal clinics by the federal government, and explains how clinical faculty and their allies can resist this political interference.

Today for @lpeblog.bsky.social I have a short piece on clinical academic freedom and the challenges we face in vindicating our rights as clinical faculty amid political interference. This piece stems from an Essay I have forthcoming on the topic in 2026. lpeproject.org/blog/clinics...

More rigorous and clear than my initial entry

This has been a debate worth reading.

"antitrust refuses to see capital as something historical and social and therefore norm-based and changeable. As a result, antitrust chooses to fight capital with one hand tied behind its back, changing some of the constitutive rules of capitalism but not others."

Today, Matthew Dimick argues that while antitrust may promise to tame corporate power, it leaves untouched the deeper logic of capitalism that compels production for profit’s sake. The latest in our mini-series on Marxism and Antitrust.

If you're looking for a super smart primer on how housing in NYC got so fucked in the first place, Phenomenal World has got you covered!! An absolute must-read by Cea Weaver! www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/sta...

Week in review: @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social on the rise of OIRA 2.0, @noahzatz.bsky.social and Jerry Kang on retaliation lawsuits against DEI purges, and Veryl Pow and Mohini Mookim on prefigurative lawyering. Plus, as always, the best of LPE from around the web!

Today, Veryl Pow and Mohini Mookim describe their approach to prefigurative lawyering at the Sustainable Economies Law Center. By striving to embody the values we wish to see in a liberated future, they argue, we can build a new world in the carcass of the old.

"The very existence of a contested baseline—that is, disagreement about the..extent of discrimination in the ..system—provides a vector of counter-attack, esp for individuals purged.. for their past DEI work, a group that includes a high concentration of Black women." lpeproject.org/blog/can-dei...

In case you weren't aware, the great Noah Zatz has migrated to bsky. And with Jerry Kang, he has a terrific post about using retaliation lawsuits to push back against Trump’s extortionate demands to end DEI. As they conclude, "this is a time for aggressive experimentation, not resignation."

"The Administration’s extraordinary abuses of power against our core institutions have triggered widespread cowardice dressed up as pragmatic survival... But if fear is the primal driver, we must activate countervailing fears wherever we can, to raise the expected costs of anticipatory capitulation"

Today, Jerry Kang and @noahzatz.bsky.social argue that even as the Trump administration seeks to dismantle DEI in the name of “merit,” the civil rights law it distorts still harbors possibilities for resistance.

Last week @lpenyc.bsky.social did an event on the political economy of NYC, "How NYC Became So Unequal" with @llchristyll.bsky.social, @masonbwilliams.bsky.social, & Gregory Louis & it was everything you hope an event will be--informative, entertaining, energizing! WATCH IT!! youtu.be/B8beobsDZfU

ICYMI

“The bill…empowers..the Office of Science & Tech Policy—to dole out nearly limitless exemptions from existing rules to individual businesses w/little transparency, accountability, or oversight.” lpeproject.org/blog/the-ris...

"conservatives are encountering a problem that has long been well understood by those on the Left: The rulemaking process is incredibly slow... OIRA 2.0 thus offers conservatives a convenient pathway for achieving almost immediately the functional equivalent of a full regulatory repeal."

Today, @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social explains how the Trump Administration’s use of individualized, firm-level waivers and exemptions marks a new frontier in presidential control of the administrative state — turning deregulation into a tool for distributing political favors.

Check out my latest for @lpeblog.bsky.social: I trace the rise of a new form of politicized regulatory relief emanating from the White House, how it departs from centralized regulatory review at OIRA, and what it means for the political economy of the modern presidency lpeproject.org/blog/the-ris...

A really astute post by @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social lpeproject.org/blog/the-ris...

Week in review: @jamesftierney.bsky.social on Intel and American State Capitalism; David Abraham on Capitalism, Democracy, and Weimar Germany; and Rana Jaleel and Risa Lieberwitz on the weaponization of Title VI. Plus, as always, the best of LPE from around the web!

"Despite calls by faculty, students, and staff for collective action, college and university administrations have opted for an individualistic approach, which has led them to compromise and capitulate on principles that are fundamental to the university fulfilling its public mission."

Today, Rana Jaleel & Risa Lieberwitz of the @aaup.org explain how the Trump administration has used Title VI to pressure universities to undermine free speech and entrench inequality, and how universities have largely crumbled in the face of this pressure. lpeproject.org/blog/the-cor...

"What we are witnessing today, however, is that even when capital is ascendant, reaping rewards previously unseen in modern times, the potential constraints posed by democracy may be too great a burden to bear."

"For all their faults and failures, no Weimar politician defending a capitalist democracy could conceivably have delivered themselves of the belief recently endorsed by Kamala Harris: 'I always believed that if push came to shove, the titans of industry would be the guardians of our democracy.'"