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LPE Blog

LPE Summer Webinar Series: Mapping Political Economy

We are elated to finally announce the LPE Project’s summer webinar series, the first session of which is tonight! The series is called “Mapping U.S. Law and Political Economy”, and will involve conversations between LPE scholars about current features of the U.S. legal-political order, how they came to be and where they might be going,…

The Constitution of Social Progress

Constitutionalism sits at the commanding heights of law. That framework of governing structures, rights, and ideals shouldn’t be abandoned to right-wing and liberal-centrist construction. Socialists and progressives instead ought to embrace a constitutional vision in which legislative and executive power give effect to the spirit of democratic equality that. . .

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Weekly Roundup: June 26, 2020

This week, The Blog hosted the first part of a symposium on socialist constitutionalism. Willy Forbath kicked off the series with a two–part post revisiting the Weimar constitution and its efforts to create a structure for worker participation in multiple levels of government, including in the firm. Sam Moyn responded with notes of skepticism about…. . .

The Relevance of Weimar

Willy Forbath’s return to the Weimar Constitution is inspiring. I will just point out of a couple of limits to turning back to it in the present — limits that strike me as difficult to overcome.

Socialism Past and Future (Part II of II)

In my last post, I began a discussion of the Weimar Constitution as one of the first constitutions containing provisions for social and economic rights (SER), and perhaps the very first one, in which socialists had an important hand drafting and expounding. The literature on constitutional SER misses a great deal when it casts the Weimar Constitution as. . .

Weekly Roundup: June 18 (Juneteenth), 2020

Happy Juneteenth, everybody. See y’all in the streets. Look, we’re doing our second weekly roundup in a row! Surely this will last forever. This week at the blog: Brian Highsmith (returning LPE champion) explored the promise of and barriers to restructuring state budgets in this abolitionist moment. Amna Akbar reflected on the abolitionist moment. . .

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A Very Special Weekly Roundup: Meet the New Editorial Team

Despite several previous attempts, weekly roundups have never exactly been a weekly phenomenon here at the LPE Blog. Like New Year’s resolutions to exercise regularly, we keep starting out with good intentions and an initial consistency in fulfilling them, only to find ourselves staring at a pile of un-rounded-up weeks wondering what happened. But. . .