Who We Are

Since 2014, APPEAL has organized scholarly activities and educational programs encouraging new (and renewed) approaches to interrelated problems of law, economy, and politics.

Since 2024, APPEAL has been part of the LPE Collective, a collaboration of membership organizations advancing LPE scholarship and community building.

Events:

What is Capitalism? Reading & Discussion Group

All are welcome!

Friday, Sept 5, 2025 at noon ET (UTC +4; 9am Pacific; 17:00 London)

This session will discuss a working paper by Eric Scorsone and Fabrizio Esposito, the Doctrinal Myth Of The Efficient Breach In The Overbid Scenario: Unduly Reducing Expected Performance To Expected Profit.

In a contractual relationship, does the Promisor own the Promisee’s performance? If so, up to what extent? These questions are at the heart of contract law and contract law scholarship. The economic approach to law has long proposed a way to answer these questions, the so-called efficient breach. What do we owe when we break an existing contract to take advantage of a better deal? The authors argue that prominent economic analysis of breach of contract misunderstands the legal, moral, and practical aspects of contractual obligations and entitlements.

This session adds to our series of sessions over the last few years examining the legal complexities of basic economic concepts. The idea of voluntary market transactions for mutual gain is central to the logics of capitalism. Closer attention to how contract law and institutions shape transactions can clarify underlying assumptions and conflicts about who deserves what and why.

Eric Scorsone is Executive Director, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service and Associate Professor of Public Policy by Courtesy, University of Virginia. He co-hosts the Legal-Economic Nexus Podcast with Sarah Klammer.

Fabrizio Esposito is Associate Professor of Private Law, NOVA School of Law and the Research & Development Centre in Law and Society in Lisbon, Portugal.

We’ll begin with a 10 minute introduction by the author, followed by extended conversation with participants. For questions, contact appeal@politicaleconomylaw.org

We welcome suggestions for readings and presenters!

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Coming soon! Stay tuned for announcements of our fall New York City workshop in the ongoing series, Heterodox Economics meets Law and Political Economy.

RESOURCES:

Martha T. McCluskey, "Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law (APPEAL): Transforming Law and Economy," Journal of Law and Political Economy, volume 4, issue 1 (2023)

This article reflects on the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and Law (APPEAL), formed in 2012 as the first contemporary scholarly group named for the emerging field of Law and Political Economy (LPE).

2023-2024 APPEAL FELLOWS

Meet our first APPEAL Fellows for 2023-2024! Awarded to two emerging scholars, the APPEAL fellows will provide supplemental conference support and mentoring to encourage new leaders in law and political economy.

Zac Hale

Zac is Senior Staff Attorney and Group Representation Specialist at Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A (BKA), where he organizes with and advocates for groups of tenants fighting for housing justice. He is also a graduate student in economics department at CUNY’s John Jay College, where he supports movement-informed academic work as President of the John Jay Law and Political Economy Society. Zac also advocates for tenant-centered policy reform as Co-Chair of the Brooklyn Tenant Lawyers Network . He collaborated with APPEAL to organize workshops in 2022 and 2023 that highlighted critical scholarship in both law and economics. He is also a nominee for the APPEAL Board.

Reshard Kolabhai

Reshard is currently an LLM student at Yale Law School, and a former full time lecturer in Constitutional Law at North-West University in South Africa. He is researching structural economic inequality under the post-apartheid South African Constitution, focusing especially on socio-economic rights, democracy, and political economy. His experience includes coordinating a grassroots civil society response to Covid-19 in South Africa and extensive involvement in the arts. He is enthusiastic about teaching the change-makers of tomorrow.

APPEAL Emerging Scholar Steering Committee

We are also excited to announce our new committee of new and aspiring scholars! The group will provide opportunities for informal advice for building the law and political economy field, especially offering perspectives of students and recent graduates with interest in integrating heterodox and interdisciplinary approaches to economics with an understanding of law grounded in legal realist and critical theories.

Committee members:

Emily Pisano (John Jay Economics)

Alex Richwine (John Jay Economics)

Lily Ginsburg (Berkeley Law graduate)

Eleanor Morgan (Sarah Lawrence College graduate)

Zac Hale (John Jay Economics)

Oskar Dye-Furstenburg (John Jay Economics)

Lauren Johnson (New School Economics)

Leah Masci (New School Economics)