Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: Any-Day Take-Home

Around the world, questions of “political economy” are back on the agenda, arrangements long taken for granted open to question, often in the name of “inequality.” 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.