Law & Political Economy (LPE) is hailed as a new analytical project that situates the study of law within a broad political economy tradition, overcoming the perceived shortcomings of the economic analysis of law, in particular its tendency to abstract from power relations and focus on efficiency rather than social justice. The LPE movement began in leading US law schools but has since spread to law schools in Europe, South America and elsewhere.
But why did LPE emerge? What are its intellectual roots and what is new about it? Perhaps more importantly, what are the challenges LPE faces in making an impact on teaching, research and practice? Can it affect the way policymakers, regulators, legislators, judges and perhaps even economists think? What lessons can it learn from other sustained efforts to criticize and replace the dominant law and economics paradigm, including critical legal studies and institutional law and economics? And what can it learn from the way the economic analysis of law spread in law schools during the 1970s and 1980s?
The WINIR Panel on Law and Political Economy with Amy Kapczynski (Yale University, USA) and Nicholas Mercuro (Michigan State University, USA), moderated by Katharina Pistor (Columbia University, USA), explored these and other questions.
The video of this debate is available on the WINIR YouTube channel.