A growing number of us in the legal academy are talking about political economy and its relationship to law. There’s a sense of community among us and a sense of change afoot. There’s even, inevitably, a blog. But what is the relationship between LPE and constitutional law? In a series of articles and our forthcoming book, The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution, my coauthor Willy Forbath and I argue that an authentically American tradition of constitutional argument centers on a particular set of claims about constitutional political economy. We argue that it would be good for Americans to extend this long-submerged tradition and to recognize the deep connections between it and a number of arguments taking flight in our current politics.
One response to this is: give it a rest! The Constitution is not our friend, any invocation of the Constitution leads inevitably to a hostile courtroom, and we’re better off resting our claims on anything besides the Constitution. Over at LPEblog, Willy has written a series of three posts that may be of interest to Balkinization readers responding to this line of critique, with a particular focus on labor rights.