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Fall 2024 Course

Law and Political Economy?

Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: Last Class Take-Home

This two credit course will consider left liberal and more radical intellectual traditions for thinking about political economy and what law has to do with it. Along the way, we will contrast alternative ideas about how the great disparities in wealth, status and authority arise, are reproduced and might be reduced. Is “inequality” the right frame? Or something more like subordination, exploitation or expropriation? Is law primarily a reformer’s tool – or something more fundamental to the reproduction of hierarchies? What would it mean to rethink or remake the foundations for political and economic life, either nationally or globally?

Emeritus Professor Duncan Kennedy will participate in the discussions.