Law and Political Economy Collective

ClassCrits VI: Stuck in Forward: Debt, Austerity and the Possibilities of the Political
The 6th Annual ClassCrits conference, held at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, CA featured scholarship on the theme “Stuck in Forward: Debt, Austerity and the Possibilities of the Political”.

Conference Materials
2013 ClassCrits Program

ClassCrits VII: Poverty, Precarity and Work: Struggle and Solidarity in an Era of Permanent Crisis
The 7th Annual ClassCrits conference, held at the University of California, Davis School of Law in Davis, CA featured scholarship on the theme “Poverty, Precarity and Work: Struggle and Solidarity in an Era of Permanent Crisis.”

Conference Materials
2014 CFP

Related Materials:
2015 Southwestern Law Review symposium (vol. 44, no. 4)

ClassCrits VIII: Emerging Coalitions: Challenging the Structures of Inequality
The 8th Annual ClassCrits conference, held at the University of Tennessee Law, Knoxville, TN featured scholarship on the theme “Challenging the Structures of Inequality.”

Conference Materials:

2015 CFP
2015 ClassCrits Program
Related Materials:
2016 Southwestern Law Review symposium (vol. 45, no. 4)

ClassCrits IX: The New Corporatocracy and Election 2016
The 9th Annual ClassCrits conference, held at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Chicago, IL featured scholarship on the theme “The New Corporatocracy and Election 2016.”

Conference Materials:

2016 Call for Papers

2017 Western New England Law Review symposium (vol. 39, no. 4)

ClassCrits X: Mobilizing for Resistance, Solidarity & Justice
The 10th Annual ClassCrits conference, held at Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans, LA, featured scholarship on the theme “Mobilizing for Resistance, Solidarity & Justice.”

Conference Materials:

2017 Call for Papers

2017 ClassCrits Program

ClassCrits XI: Rising Together for Economic Hope, Power & Justice
The 11th Annual ClassCrits conference, held at West Virginia University College of Law in Morgantown, WV, featured scholarship on the theme “Rising Together for Economic Hope, Power & Justice.”

Conference Materials:

2018 Call for Papers

2018 ClassCrits Program

Summer Academy: Law and Money: From Past to Future
2019-07-10 18:57 - 19:57 (Africa/Abidjan)
Program
2019 Summer Academy
Law and Money: From Past to Future
Hosted by University of Manchester

ClassCrits XII: Facing Our Challenges
The 12th Annual ClassCrits conference, held at Western New England University School of Law in Springfield, MA featured scholarship on the theme “Facing Our Challenges: Rescuing Democracy, Ensuring Wellbeing & Exorcizing the Politics of Fear (Or: How To Be Free).”

Conference Materials:

2019 Call for Papers

2019 ClassCrits Program

Summer Academy on Law, Money and Technology
2020-07-13 19:01 - 20:01
Program
2020 Summer Academy
Law, Money, and Technology: Transforming Political Economy
Hosted by University of Manchester

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #1
July 31, 2020
Jamee Moudud, Professor of Economics at Sarah Lawrence College (with research assistance from Nikos Efstratudakis), led a discussion of Robert L. Heilbroner, The Nature and Logic of Capitalism (1985) (excerpts) and Robert L. Hale, “Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State,” Political Science Quarterly 38 (1923), 470-94.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #2
August 27, 2020
Discussion focused on two short essays by economist Joan Robinson, “Latter-Day Capitalism,” New Left Review, July/August 1962, and “The Final End of Laissez-Faire,” New Left Review, July/August 1964.

Pandemic Inequality
A panel discussion on the social-capital disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact in exacerbating inequality.

Moderators

Athena D. Mutua, ClassCrits Vice President, University at Buffalo School of Law

Thomas E. Kleven, ClassCrits Board Member, Thurgood Marshall School of Law

Presentations

Thomas E. Kleven, Thurgood Marshall School of Law, “COVID-19: An Overview of Where We Stand”

Alicia Ely Yamin, Harvard Law School, “When Misfortune Becomes (More) Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality in the COVID-19 Pandemic”

Erika K. Wilson, University of North Carolina School of Law, “COVID-19, Racial Disparities & Educational Inequality”

Emeka Duruigbo, Thurgood Marshall School of Law, “The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on Africa’s Efforts to Develop and Unify”

Emily A. Spieler, Northeastern University School of Law, “When ‘Essential’ Workers Work: Risks to Vulnerable People in the Midst of Dysfunction”

Andrew Hammond, University of Florida Levin College of Law, “The COVID-19 Pandemic as Preview: The Welfare State’s Weaknesses amid the Climate Crisis”

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #3
September 25, 2020
Eric Scorsone, Director of the MSUE Center for Local Government Finance and Policy at Michigan State University, led a discussion of Keynesian theory and policy centered around three readings: Joan Robinson, “What has become of the Keynesian Revolution?,” Challenge (Jan./Feb. 1974), Warren Samuels, “In Praise of Joan Robinson: Economics as Social Control,” Society (Jan./Feb. 1989), and Warren Samuels, “Some Fundamentals of the Economic Role of Government,” Journal of Economic Issues 23 (1989), 427-433.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #4
October 23, 2020
Eric Scorsone, Director, and Sarah S. Klammer, Academic Specialist, both of the MSUE Center for Local Government Finance and Policy at Michigan State University, led a discussion about the work of John Commons, an early twentieth-century expert in law and economics from an institutionalist perspective.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #5
November 20, 2020
Carol E. Heim, Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, led a discussion of Jonathan Levy, “Accounting for Profit and the History of Capital,” Critical Historical Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 2014), 171-214 and Carol E. Heim, “Capitalism,” in Dictionary of American History, 3rd ed., vol. 2, Cabeza to Demography, ed. Stanley I. Kutler (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003), pp. 41-47.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #6
December 18, 2020
Jamee Moudud, Professor of Economics at Sarah Lawrence College, led a discussion of two short readings on W.E.B. Dubois’s important contributions to institutional economics and political economy.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #7
January 29, 2021
Dr. Dimitri Van Den Meerssche (PhD EUI, LL.M. NYU), an associate fellow at the Asser Institute and a postdoctoral research fellow at Edinburgh Law School, led a discussion of Julie E. Cohen, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism (Oxford Univ. Press 2019), chapter 2, “The Biopolitical Public Domain.”

Presumed Incompetent
This panel brought together one of the co-editors and several contributors to Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power and Resistance of Women in Academia (Utah State University Press, 2020). The panel discusses the formidable obstacles that women of color encounter in the academic workplace and the tenacity and creativity that they deploy to overcome these barriers. As law schools are called to grapple with systemic injustice and to embrace anti-racist pedagogy, the struggles and victories of women of color offer valuable lessons on best practices to recruit, retain, and promote faculty who share this goal and eagerly embrace this challenge.

Panelists & Moderator

Carmen G. Gonzalez, Morris I. Leibman Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law

Sahar Aziz, Professor of Law, Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, Middle East Legal Scholar, and Director of the Center for Security, Race and Rights, Rutgers Law School

Adrien K. Wing, Bessie Dutton Murray Professor of Law & Associate Dean for International Programs, University of Iowa College of Law

Laura M. Padilla, Professor of Law, California Western School of Law

Athena Mutua, Professor of Law, Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar SUNY Buffalo Law School (Moderator)

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #8
February 26, 2021
Marilyn Power, Professor Emerita of Economics at Sarah Lawrence College, led a discussion on feminist insights into the law and political economy of capitalism.

Racial Capitalism
In recent years, interest in racial capitalism has exploded in several disciplines, including history, political theory, and cultural studies. What does “racial capitalism” mean? What is, or should be, the relationship of this framework to Critical Race Theory and settler colonialism theory? What might an understanding of legal doctrines, institutions, and processes add to racial capitalism scholarship? This panel brings together scholars whose cutting-edge research projects investigate markets, politics, and white supremacy.

Panelists & Moderator

Abbye Atkinson, Assistant Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Panelist)

Andrea Freeman, Professor of Law, University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law (Panelist)

Athena Mutua, Professor of Law, Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York (Panelist)

Daria Roithmayr, Richard L. and Antoinette S. Kirtland Professor of Law, University of Southern California School of Law (Panelist)

Natsu Taylor Saito, Distinguished University Professor, Georgia State University School of Law (Commentator)

Angela P. Harris, Professor Emerita, University of California, Davis School of Law (Moderator)

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #9
March 26, 2021
Dr. Maha Rafi Atal, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Business School, facilitated a discussion of how the historically changing relationship between the corporation, state and society sheds light on capitalism.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #10
2021-04-23 00:01 - 01:01
April 23, 2021
Jamee Moudud, Professor of Economics at Sarah Lawrence College, led a discussion of his paper on how racial capitalism was built into the legal and political design of central banking and taxation in the British Empire.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #11
May 21, 2021
Ruth Dukes, Professor of Labour Law at the University of Glasgow, led a discussion of her paper “The Economic Sociology of Labour Law,” Journal of Law and Society, 2019.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #12
June 25, 2021
Kim Christensen, Professor of Economics at Sarah Lawrence College, and Martha McCluskey, Professor Emerita at University at Buffalo Law School, led a discussion of about the property rights movement. Readings focused on the U.S. Supreme Court case, Cedar Point Nursery vs. Hassid.

Summer Academy on Law, Money, and Technology
2021-07-26
2021 Summer Academy
Law, Money, and Technology: Toward Democratic Futures
Hosted by University of Manchester

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #13
August 20, 2021
Sarah Haan, Professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, led a discussion of her article, “Corporate Governance and the Feminization of Capital,” forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #14
September 10, 2021
Michael C. Duff, Winston S. Howard Distinguished Professor at University of Wyoming Law, led a discussion of his draft article about workplace injury and illness, worker’s constitutional rights to protection, and what this shows about the legal underpinnings of capitalism.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #15
November 5, 2021
Margaret Levenstein, Director of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), and Research Professor at the University of Michigan, discussed her article “Escape from Equilibrium: Thinking Historically About Firm Responses to Competition,” Enterprise and Society, vol. 13, no. 4 (Dec. 2012), pp. 710-728.

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #16
November 19, 2021
Daniel J.H. Greenwood, Professor of Law at Hofstra University, led a discussion of his article, “Introduction to the Metaphors of Corporate Law,” 4 Seattle Journal for Social Justice 273 (2005).

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group #17
March 4, 2022
Faisal Chaudhry, Assistant Professor of Law and History, University of Dayton led a discussion on property as rent centered his recent paper examining mortgage securitization and ideas about property.
