Courts and Capitalism – LPE Project

On Judging Cases in the Context of Crisis

Luke Herrine — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 11:00:00 +0000

I thank the Law and Political Economy Project for inviting me to participate in this blog symposium on capitalism and the courts. I begin by stating the obvious: that we live in a capitalist economic system and a political system that aspires to being democratic. There is clearly considerable tension between these systems. Most capitalists and many people who identify with them strongly support...

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Courts and Constitutional Political Economy

Luke Herrine — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 11:00:00 +0000

For most of American history, all sides in most major fights about the nation’s political economy agreed about one thing: the questions they were fighting about were constitutional in nature. In other words, they were fighting about constitutional political economy. This point is central to a book project that Willy Forbath and I have been working on for a few years...

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On Courts, Exchanges, and Rights

Luke Herrine — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Movements to challenge capitalism, or at least reform its worst excesses, have often exhibited a healthy skepticism about courts, preferring to place their faith in the more democratic branch of government, legislatures. (In our times of deadlocked legislatures and unbounded executives, nurturing such a faith is challenging indeed, but that is a different issue altogether.) But just how far does...

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Market-Based Law Development

Luke Herrine — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 13:35:17 +0000

Critical scholars have highlighted the role of law in subordination and argued for redirection of energy away from courts, but they have devoted less attention to a more basic problem: The civil justice system supports and depends on market-based development of law. This can be seen in the wide divergence in social investments in the fora that adjudicate the problems of the poor and those reserved...

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