"Morality tales about virtuous entrepreneurs or predatory speculators are less descriptions of economic reality than prescriptive efforts to shape it. To label some capitalists as productive and others extractive is a political act – a way of trying to direct behavior toward socially desired ends."

Today, Noam Maggor (@maggor.bsky.social) concludes our symposium on @jasonbjackson.bsky.social's *Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry.* Although rooted in Indian history, he argues, the book’s thoroughly global-comparative mode of analysis allows it to resonate far beyond South Asia.

Today, @jeenashahesq.bsky.social argues that Trump’s contradictory treatment of Hernández and Maduro reveals the consistency of U.S. foreign policy: the War on Drugs serves as a flexible tool for maintaining global capitalism’s necessary periphery.

In my latest piece out today on @lpeblog.bsky.social, I reconcile Trump's pardoning of a former Honduran President on drug trafficking while abducting Maduro on similar charges by showing how both actions are consistent with the logic underlying the U.S.'s War on Drugs lpeproject.org/blog/trumps-...

How might we revive a pro-labor vision of the Constitution, and how would such a vision relate to the Constitution’s broader democratic purpose? Today, Kate Andrias, Willy Forbath, Jennifer Abruzzo, Keith Bolek, Andrea Hoeschen, Darin Dalmat, and Alvin Velazquez share their perspectives.

I've belatedly made my way onto Bluesky and just wanted to thank everyone who read and shared my LPE Blog post last month. I'm off to the archives next week to dig deeper into NYC foster care in the ’90s. More to come…

Week in review: @veenadubal.bsky.social and @azizaahmed.bsky.social on how feminists transformed the law and science of AIDS, @lookheron.bsky.social on market governance in Trumpworld, and @abalasub.bsky.social on the misnomer of modern Indian capital. Plus, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵

Today, @abalasub.bsky.social continues our symposium on *Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry.* Given that Indian firms spend virtually nothing on R&D, he asks, how we should understand the modernity of so-called “modern Indian capitalists”?

this answer from @azizaahmed.bsky.social in an interview about her book, Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS, just blew my mind lpeproject.org/blog/how-fem...

Today, Luke Herrine (@lookheron.bsky.social) offers a whirlwind tour of market governance in Trumpworld. While most agencies have embraced a pro-monopolist, pro-corruption reorientation, the lone exception is the FTC. Why is this? And what does it suggest about market regulation under Trump 2.0?

Depending on who you ask, Lewis Powell Jr. is either: an ideological mastermind of the Right who led the corporate counter-revolution OR the Supreme Court’s quintessential “swing justice" upholding liberal positions in some of the Court’s most high-profile cases (from affirmative action to abortion)

I’ve got a spicy essay on @lpeblog.bsky.social arguing Trump2 so far has been like 1979 deregulation returning as farce lpeproject.org/blog/market-...

Entry 8,735 in the ongoing series: “The Regrettable History of Law & Economics.”

Thank you to the most brilliant @veenadubal.bsky.social for being my conversation partner about my book on the @lpeblog.bsky.social and to the masterful @jamesbrandt.bsky.social for his support. lpeproject.org/blog/how-fem... @bulaw.bsky.social

The week in review: Sophina Clark on work-spreading as a non-reformist reform, @jasonbjackson.bsky.social on the moral orders of capitalist legitimacy, and Amy Cohen on a potential post-moral turn in American capitalism. Plus, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵

Today, Amy Cohen continues our symposium on @jasonbjackson.bsky.social's *Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry,* considering what his framework might tell us about the recent return of patrimonial capitalism in the United States.

Really honored to have my new @harvardpress.bsky.social book be part of an @lpeblog.bsky.social symposium! I am deeply grateful to @lpeproject.bsky.social colleagues for the opportunity, and to my respondents @maggor.bsky.social, @abalasub.bsky.social & Amy Cohen for engaging with my work. 🙏

Today, @jasonbjackson.bsky.social kicks off a symposium on his new book, *Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India.* Economic policymaking, he argues, is best understood as a state-led project of moral ordering of capital.

"There are many ways to create work: through lowering interest rates to spur investment (Keynesians), industrial policy or jobs programs (New Dealers), tax breaks or deregulation (neoliberals)... these are reformist reforms. They perpetuate the work-based society rather than moving us beyond it."

Can we, the long-houred professionals, shorten our workweeks so that all might work? Can we accept that our work, so important to us, might, in an ideal world, not exist at all?

"There are many ways to create work: through lowering interest rates to spur investment (Keynesians), industrial policy or jobs programs (New Dealers), tax breaks or deregulation (neoliberals)... these are reformist reforms. They perpetuate the work-based society rather than moving us beyond it."

Week in review: Mariana Pargendler and Olívia Pasqualeto on Brazil’s forgotten legal innovation to protect workers, and Victor Pickard on the American media polycrisis. Plus, as always, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵

Anyone have an answer for Laura?

Today, Mariana Pargendler explains how, in 1937, Brazil adopted a bold legal innovation to protect workers that remains virtually nonexistent in the Global North: imposing joint and several liability on parent companies for labor obligations.

This overlooked history "teaches us that limited liability is neither natural nor universal, that legal innovation doesn’t flow only from North to South, and that seemingly technical corporate law doctrines are deeply entangled with questions of distribution, power, and sovereignty." 🔥🔥

I don’t think most people realize just how little the United States has traditionally spent on public media.

whew this piece by a Minnesota law prof says the "destabilization" rn is "not the breakdown of legal protection, but the migration of those cracks inward [...] That migration from margin to center is visible not only on the street but in constitutional doctrine itself" lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...

I have a new @lpeproject.bsky.social essay out that offers a framework for teasing apart three discrete and cascading layers of “media capture” that produce censorship, exclusion, and democratic failure in our information and communication systems. lpeproject.org/blog/the-ame...

The week in review: Vincent Joralemon on the flawed legal architecture behind drug pricing, Eamon Coburn on the anti-worker character of “no taxes on overtime,” and Emmanuel Mauleón on the gradual erosion of legal protection preceding recent events in Minnesota. Plus, the best of LPE in the 🧵👇

A must-read: "If law is to function as anything other than a retrospective vocabulary for state violence, as a lens inverted to minimize and occlude the contours of such violence and its meanings, then it must be wielded deliberately..."

Today, Emmanuel Mauleón reflects on the situation in Minnesota, what it tells us about the law, and how the legal community should respond. lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...

"The question, then, is not whether violence has intensified, but why it can now appear without disguise. Practices long concentrated at the border and in communities deemed expendable have traveled inward, meeting people who once believed law would shield them."

"Here, too, law and order are being produced, not by courts that rapidly retreat from confrontation under a presumption of regularity, or agencies that disclaim responsibility for their own violence, but by collective practice that emerges when formal guarantees prove selectively unreliable."

a beautifully written and powerful piece from University of Minnesota Law professor Emmanuel Mauleón on the stakes of how the legal profession responds in this moment. lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...

Hey, read this. lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...

Today, Eamon Coburn argues that the recent “no tax on overtime” provision, by encouraging people to spend more time on the job, runs directly counter to the original purpose of overtime laws: to protect workers’ personal time and give them greater control over their lives.

"No taxes on overtime" might sound like a win for workers, but the underlying message is clear: the 40-hour workweek is no longer enough. A real pro-worker policy would mean shorter hours, higher pay, and no mandatory overtime.

"advocates for no tax on overtime have continually traded on the idea that the 40-hour workweek is no longer enough... But the idea that Americans are working too little is absurd. The average American worker spends over 1,800 hrs/yr on the job, dramatically more than workers in many economic peers"

Great piece on the rationale for maximum hours laws in light of the “no tax on overtime” messaging in @lpeblog.bsky.social by Eamon Coburn : lpeproject.org/blog/what-is... . Time to reclaim “8 (or 10 or 12) hours for what we will” as a principle in bargaining and lawmaking.

In 2015, Martin Shkreli became the most hated man in America by raising the price of Daraprim – an antiparasitic essential for immunocompromised patients – from $17.50 to $750 per pill. How much does Daraprim cost today? $750 per pill.

I almost cried during the Bad Bunny show when I saw the workers repairing the electrical system. I spent years working on Puerto Rico's crisis, and this was the one thing I couldn't resolve before moving to the academy. Thanks to the @lpeblog.bsky.social and @lpeproject.bsky.social for sharing this.

If you were confused by the part of Bad Bunny’s halftime show where dancers re-enacted Puerto Rico’s economic struggles under PROMESA’s bankruptcy process, here’s a breakdown of what that moment was all about: lpeproject.org/blog/how-ban...

The first ALPE conference is in the books and it was incredible! Over 300 presenters, 450+ people in attendance. It was great to see so many friends and comrades who have been building LPE for years among so many new faces! lawandpoliticaleconomy.org?page_id=63

Almost 500 people in attendance at inaugural @a-lpe.bsky.social conference! Cc @lpeproject.bsky.social @lpeblog.bsky.social

Deloitte is a $74B cancer on American government is an accurate diagnosis, but MAGA is constitutionally incapable of solving this problem. Government inefficiency, privatization, and grift *is* their political project.

Depressing: we published a more informative post on the same topic last week, by an author who isn't a Nazi, and all we got was this lousy t-shirt.

"As one dissenting staffer reportedly said in response to the Heritage Foundation’s call for a 'Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family': 'I don’t want to go back fifty years.'"

Our history "provides stark reminders of what a return to this vision of family could entail in practice: women trapped in abusive marriages; fines, incarceration, and family separation for poor women who had nonmarital children; unchecked discrimination in housing, employment, and child custody."

Over at @lpeblog.bsky.social: My brilliant colleague @serenamayeri.bsky.social on "Writing a History of Marital Privilege in an Age of Retrenchment." #LegalHistory