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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

Friday March 28 at 3 pm ET; 20:00 UTC/UK; noon Pacific Time. Discussion with Paul Cammack, University of Manchester, featuring his article, Politics and Political Economy of Post-Reproduction Societies.  REGISTER HERE


How are recent pro-natalist politics in the US and elsewhere linked to the changing politics of global capitalism?   

From the author’s abstract:  This article provides an exploratory historical materialist perspective on the national and global politics and political economy of post-reproduction societies. It identifies two overlapping processes in the global development of capitalism since the 1960s, the first widening opportunities beyond marriage and child-bearing for those who might bear children, and the second bringing all individuals and governments under the increasing discipline of the politics of global competitiveness. The resulting dynamics bring daily and generational reproduction into fundamental contradiction with each other, in ways that are sharply differentiated by race, class, and location in the world market. The international and supranational agencies supportive of the development of the world market have followed these developments closely. They accept that falling rates of fertility will not be reversed, and they promote a post-reproduction political economy which is intended to give added impetus to the development of capitalism on a global scale. The attitudes of government vary, in accordance with the level of their commitment to a politics of global competitiveness, and their socio-cultural politics. With exceptions, the issue of declining fertility rates is not prominent either in Marxist feminism, or in social reproduction theory. Here, I aim to encourage a wider debate. 


Friday, April 25, 2025 at 2 pm ET: Katherine Moos, University of Massachusetts Amherst Economics,  will discuss her current book project. Register here.

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ANNOUNCING: CALL FOR EMERGING SCHOLAR SUBMISSIONS

Law and Political Economy Meets Heterodox Economics:

Power, Freedom, Institutions, and the Law

Submission Deadline extended to March 15th

Saturday, April 12, 2025

9:00am–5:00pm ET

Yale Law School

127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511

 

At our Spring 2025 workshop, we seek to feature multi-disciplinary and intersectional emerging scholarship reflecting on the relationships between politics, law, and economics, and society. We welcome papers both on and beyond the general workshop theme of “Power, Freedom, Institutions, and the Law.”


Students and emerging scholars interested in presenting law-and-political-economy-informed analysis of class, gender, race, imperialism, and more, are welcome to submit a 100–300 word abstract with titles by March 15, 2025, via the following link: https://bit.ly/4b0hAxa. In keeping with a commitment to methodological pluralism, research utilizing quantitative or qualitative methods, analytic or institutional approaches, and other techniques from a variety of disciplines, will all be considered. We are especially interested in soliciting abstracts that cut across disciplinary lines involving economics, law and institutionalism, politics, history, etc.


We encourage proposals and projects at every stage of their development; completed papers are not necessary at the time of the workshop. If you are unsure if your proposal fits the submission guidelines, please do not hesitate to contact the organizers by mailing to appeal@politicaleconomylaw.org.


This workshop will take place alongside a one-day conference on “Comparative Legal and Political Futures: South Africa and Palestine”. The joint two-day event thus begins on Friday, April 11, at 9:00 am, and ends with the APPEAL workshop the following day. Friday’s panels will focus on lessons from South Africa and Palestine on the law and political economy of compartmentalization, law and political praxis, and gender and apartheid. Other panels will reflect on South Africa 30 years after apartheid and Palestine in Middle East politics. Saturday’s workshop will begin with a plenary panel on Third World internationalism today, and a masterclass on methods in law and political economy. We invite those interested in attending or presenting at the Saturday emerging scholar symposium to also attend the Friday conference.


If you are interested in presenting or attending, please note that, while the workshop and conference are free of charge and will include lunch and refreshments, we are unfortunately unable to provide support for travel or lodging.

 

Co-organizers and Sponsors:

The Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law (APPEAL), a program of the LPE Collective;

Yale Law and Political Economy Student Group;

John Jay College Economics Department;

John Jay College Law and Political Economy Society;

With New School for Social Research students and faculty; and

UMass Amherst LPE Group


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Just Published!

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).


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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. 


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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)