The Law & Economics Center held the Workshop on the Law & Political Economy Project from Saturday, March 15 – Monday, March 17, 2025 at the Henderson Beach Resort in Destin, Florida.

This LEC workshop was a two-and-a-half-day program that evaluated the challenges the LPE Project makes to the findings and utility of law and economics scholarship and the challenges it makes to the basic tenets of free markets and capitalism. An excerpt from Yale’s LPE Project website demonstrates that it seeks to promote scholarship that is highly critical of markets, capitalism, and classical liberal values. Does abundance obtain only by adherence to a paradigm that sets the conditions for human flourishing through following basic tenets of free markets, capitalism, the rule of law, individual freedom, equality of economic opportunity, and neutral resolution of disputes, enforcement of rights, and recognition of private ordering from an independent judiciary? Or, are these institutions and principles instead roadblocks to progress and flourishing, as the growing LPE Project maintains?

No prior knowledge of, or familiarity with, the LPE Project was required to apply. Indeed, the workshop was designed to help introduce scholars to this debate, with preference given to those not already engaged in it. The only requirements were an interest to learn more about these subjects and a desire to use that knowledge in the discourse within the larger academic community—through writing, speaking, or adjusting teaching based on what was learned.

This was a lecture-based program. Across 3 days, 5 75-minute sessions included dynamic presentations on issues raised by the LPE Project with time for questions and participant engagement.

Instructors were leading scholars from across the country who have recently researched these issues. Mostly, these lecturers were drawn from the group of authors who produced original research during the LEC’s Research Roundtable on the Emerging Law & Political Economy Movement. Authors from this roundtable presented their papers and participants were encouraged to ask questions and engage in a discussion around the topics.

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Questions:
If you have any questions, please contact Gwendolyn Watson at [email protected] or 703.993.8388.