Week in review: @veenadubal.bsky.social and @azizaahmed.bsky.social on how feminists transformed the law and science of AIDS, @lookheron.bsky.social on market governance in Trumpworld, and @abalasub.bsky.social on the misnomer of modern Indian capital.
Plus, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵
Today, @abalasub.bsky.social continues our symposium on *Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry.*
Given that Indian firms spend virtually nothing on R&D, he asks, how we should understand the modernity of so-called “modern Indian capitalists”?
An important piece showing that losses in court haven’t stopped Trump from seizing Congress’s spending power and targeting dissenters and “blue states.”
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
screenshotted excerpt from the interview linked in the post the question, written in bold, is: "What did the CDC’s definition of AIDS look like at this point, and how did it systematically exclude women like the ones Terry was representing?" Screenshot includes the first two paragraphs of Aziza's answer, which starts as follows: At the time, the CDC defined AIDS through symptom lists tailored to the so-called “four Hs”: homosexuals, Haitians, heroin users, and hemophiliacs. Gynecological conditions were excluded. As a result, many women whose HIV had progressed to AIDS—often through invasive cervical cancer or recurrent pelvic inflammatory disease—were unable to work but did not qualify for benefits. Instead they would have to file for disability benefits. But the disability assessment process was so slow that some women were approved only after they had died. Terry realized the problem wasn’t just bureaucratic delay—it was the definition of the disease itself. At the same time, activists within ACT UP, particularly Maxine Wolfe and the Women’s Caucus, were recognizing that women were being systematically ignored in the epidemic. Terry’s legal advocacy and ACT UP’s activism converged in a coordinated push to force the CDC to revise its definition of AIDS.
this answer from @azizaahmed.bsky.social in an interview about her book, Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS, just blew my mind
lpeproject.org/blog/how-fem...
Everything you always wanted to know about 'Temu Lina Khan' but were afraid to ask.
Today, Luke Herrine (@lookheron.bsky.social) offers a whirlwind tour of market governance in Trumpworld.
While most agencies have embraced a pro-monopolist, pro-corruption reorientation, the lone exception is the FTC. Why is this? And what does it suggest about market regulation under Trump 2.0?
Thank you to the most brilliant @veenadubal.bsky.social for being my conversation partner about my book on the @lpeblog.bsky.social and to the masterful @jamesbrandt.bsky.social for his support. lpeproject.org/blog/how-fem... @bulaw.bsky.social
a photo of Justice Powell from his time on the Supreme Court
Depending on who you ask, Lewis Powell Jr. is either: an ideological mastermind of the Right who led the corporate counter-revolution OR the Supreme Court’s quintessential “swing justice" upholding liberal positions in some of the Court’s most high-profile cases (from affirmative action to abortion)
I’ve got a spicy essay on @lpeblog.bsky.social arguing Trump2 so far has been like 1979 deregulation returning as farce
lpeproject.org/blog/market-...
Entry 8,735 in the ongoing series: “The Regrettable History of Law & Economics.”
"I think responses [that ask only for the Administration to 'explain itself'] are pathetic. This isn’t a mystery that needs to be solved. This is not the case of the missing casus belli."
Black ink drawing, silhouette of a utility pole and power lines
Black ink drawing, silhouette of a utility pole and power lines
Black ink drawing, silhouette of a utility pole and power lines
Black ink drawing, silhouette of a utility pole and power lines
This weekend I put up some of my original Power Lines Drawings for sale at my store. This is the first time I've offered original drawings from this series for sale
marcusmerritt.bigcartel.com/category/pow...
The week in review: Sophina Clark on work-spreading as a non-reformist reform, @jasonbjackson.bsky.social on the moral orders of capitalist legitimacy, and Amy Cohen on a potential post-moral turn in American capitalism.
Plus, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵
"What looms now on the horizon is perhaps a post-moral turn that no longer asks its privileged market actors to represent their interests as about advancing a shared future."
Or just traveling on public roads!
Really honored to have my new @harvardpress.bsky.social book be part of an @lpeblog.bsky.social symposium! I am deeply grateful to @lpeproject.bsky.social colleagues for the opportunity, and to my respondents @maggor.bsky.social, @abalasub.bsky.social & Amy Cohen for engaging with my work. 🙏
Today, @jasonbjackson.bsky.social kicks off a symposium on his new book, *Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India.*
Economic policymaking, he argues, is best understood as a state-led project of moral ordering of capital.
Can we, the long-houred professionals, shorten our workweeks so that all might work? Can we accept that our work, so important to us, might, in an ideal world, not exist at all?
Week in review: Mariana Pargendler and Olívia Pasqualeto on Brazil’s forgotten legal innovation to protect workers, and Victor Pickard on the American media polycrisis.
Plus, as always, the best of LPE from around the web 🧵
The Budget Lab findings from 2/18/2026: "Implied passthrough of tariffs to imported consumer goods prices ranges from roughly 31–63% for core goods and 42–96% for durables, depending on methodology."
That sounds like it represents a fair amount of pass through!
New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
If you haven't read this fantastic piece by @jwmason.bsky.social on the complexities & the path forward for making housing affordable in NYC co-published by @nycpolicyforum.bsky.social & @phenomenalworld.bsky.social
@phenomenalworld, really you should!!
nycpolicyforum.substack.com/p/the-real-c...
This overlooked history "teaches us that limited liability is neither natural nor universal, that legal innovation doesn’t flow only from North to South, and that seemingly technical corporate law doctrines are deeply entangled with questions of distribution, power, and sovereignty." 🔥🔥
And this chart, which shows public media spending as a proportion of GDP, was made before Congress defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting last year.
I don’t think most people realize just how little the United States has traditionally spent on public media.
I have a new @lpeproject.bsky.social essay out that offers a framework for teasing apart three discrete and cascading layers of “media capture” that produce censorship, exclusion, and democratic failure in our information and communication systems. lpeproject.org/blog/the-ame...
The week in review: Vincent Joralemon on the flawed legal architecture behind drug pricing, Eamon Coburn on the anti-worker character of “no taxes on overtime,” and Emmanuel Mauleón on the gradual erosion of legal protection preceding recent events in Minnesota.
Plus, the best of LPE in the 🧵👇
Nothing better than the trusty paperback. Did you ever see this?
www.instagram.com/reels/Cxbgqj...
"The question, then, is not whether violence has intensified, but why it can now appear without disguise. Practices long concentrated at the border and in communities deemed expendable have traveled inward, meeting people who once believed law would shield them."
a beautifully written and powerful piece from University of Minnesota Law professor Emmanuel Mauleón on the stakes of how the legal profession responds in this moment.
lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...
