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New Economy Law Center Articles, Chapters, Books
Speth's State of the Nation
Rebecca Milaschewski
Common Dreams published NELC co-founder and fellow, Gus Speth's, "A People's State of the Nation," which rings alarm bells in terms of how the US compares to other high consuming countries in terms of social, environmental, economic, and health indicators.
ABA features NELC Fellow Mary Wood's climate change work
In this latest ABA feature, they highlight the pioneering thinking of Mary Wood in shaping climate change litigation strategy in the US. NELC co-founder Gus Speth also weighs in on the story.
McKibben RADIO FREE VERMONT, A FABLE OF RESISTANCE, 2017
Melissa Scanlan
In his latest book (and first novel), NELC Fellow, Bill McKibben, takes his resistance angst and turns it into a love letter to Vermont, local craft beer, human-scale economies and decision making like "Town Meeting Day," and Ethan Allen. With humor, he tells a tale of seceding as a protest against the big impersonal political economic forces that brought us climate disruption and Donald Trump. You may want to fly the new flag by the time you're finished reading it, featuring an image of Camel's Hump and Ethan Allen's "The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills." He intersperses the entertaining story with bits of insights. From the character Trance, a soldier, on strategy: "You don't choose your opponent's weapons." From the character Vern, on vision: "We want farmers growing food that people want to eat – we want slaughterhouses in Vermont again, and grain mills. Not big food so we can get salmonella from some feedlot in Indiana, but small food, so we can get dinner from our neighbors. So we can have security." And on democracy: "We all need to be reminded that democracy isn't just voting for president every four years and then trusting him to fix things. Democracy is about getting together with your community to think together about your future. Sometimes it's dull, and sometimes people get long-winded, and sometimes they get stiff-necked. But town meeting has been going on for three hundred years, ever since people got to Vermont. Just go see.
"…And the one thing no one ever says anymore in our public life: I think you're wrong, but you may be right." Try it.
Purdy "Normcore" in Dissent, Summer 2018.
Jedediah Purdy, law professor and author of a chapter in Law for the New Economy: Sustainable, Just, and Democratic, (Melissa K. Scanlan ed., May 2017), takes aim at what he terms "crisis-of-democracy literature" in his review of five books typical of the burgeoning genre. These titles posit the Trump presidency as an unprecedented threat to the "norms" of liberal democracy. But they seldom reckon with the "perennial carnage of American capitalism" and its relation to democracy, which made Trump's ascendance possible. Overcoming this existential crisis demands more than a slavish devotion to restoring the norms Trump so gleefully tears asunder; it warrants bold political imagination. Purdy argues a "more robust approach would have been to ask how political leadership and mobilization can open up new ideological frontiers, for better or worse."
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/normcore-trump-resistance-books-crisis-of-democracy
New Book Explores Shift to New Economy
Dana Drugmand
Many NELC Fellows just completed a major collaboration to produce a new book exploring the laws and policies supporting the shift to a new economy. Covering a variety of areas from food to energy to the commons and Earth rights, the book addresses the laws and values for undertaking comprehensive system change. NELC Fellows contributing to the book include NELC co-founders, Melissa Scanlan and Gus Speth, along with Shalanda Baker, David Bollier, Kevin Jones, Janelle Orsi, Laurie Ristino, Linda Sheehan, Jennifer Taub, and Mary Christina Wood. Additional authors joining the fellows are Jedediah Purdy, Mark James, Diana Winters, and Catherine Iorns Magallanes. NELC director, Melissa Scanlan, is the editor of the volume. To schedule a book talk, contact Becca Milaschewski, rmilaschewski@vermontlaw.edu
Law and Policy for a New Economy: Sustainable, Just, and Democratic, (Melissa K. Scanlan ed., Edward Elgar, 2017)
http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/law-and-policy-for-a-new-economy
E-book version available here: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781786434517.xml
Gus Speth: The Joyful Economy
In a new piece published in the sixth volume of Next System Project's "New Systems: Possibilities and Proposals" series, NSP co-chair and New Economy Law Center co-founder Gus Speth presents the case for transforming our political economy, and offers a possible vision for an alternative system that prioritizes people, place, and planet over profit and power. "In the Joyful Economy, the goal of economic life is to sustain, nourish, and restore human and natural communities," Speth writes. See the link below to read more.
http://www.thenextsystem.org/the-joyful-economy/
This essay is also an opening chapter in the forthcoming Law and Policy for a New Economy: Sustainable, Just, and Democratic, (Melissa K. Scanlan ed., Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2017)
NELC Fellow Inspires Global Tax March Movement
This Saturday, April 15th – traditionally designated as "Tax Day," – tens of thousands of people will take to the streets in cities across the globe in protest of President Donald Trump's refusal to release his tax returns. The idea for a "Tax March" originated with Vermont Law School professor, and New Economy Law Center Fellow, Jennifer Taub. "I impulsively shot off a tweet at two in the afternoon, and by the next morning, I'd created a movement," Taub told The Guardian. For the full story, see the link below.
Amber Jamieson. "Tax March: How a Law Professor Sparked a Global Event to Demand Trump's Returns," The Guardian, April 12, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/12/tax-march-trump-tax-returns-activism-jennifer-taub
Law and Economics: Contemporary Approaches
Conventional neoclassical economics and traditional law curriculum are too confining and outdated to address contemporary challenges. This paper argues that "the urgent challenges of the 21st Century also call for a new Law and Economics." New Economy Law Center Fellows Martha McCluskey, Frank Pasquale, and Jennifer Taub authored the paper in response to Yale Law School's Conference on Law and Inequality. The piece lays the foundation and outlines the aims of a new casebook by these Fellows.
Martha T. McCluskey, Frank Pasquale & Jennifer Taub, Law and Economics: Contemporary Approaches, 35 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 297 (2016), http://ylpr.yale.edu/sites/default/files/YLPR/mccusley-pasquale-taub.final_.2.pdf
Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change Challenge
Contributing authors – including New Economy Law Center Fellows Sarah Krakoff and Pat Parenteau – offer ideas for re-examining and re-evaluating the concept of sustainability within the complex context of anthropogenic climate change.
Jessica Owley and Keith Hirokawa (ed.) Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change Challenge, Environmental Law Institute: Washington DC, 2015, https://www.eli.org/eli-press-books/rethinking-sustainability-meet-climate-change-challenge
Beyond Uneconomic Growth: Economics, Equity and the Ecological Predicament
"We urgently require an economic system that prioritizes ecological sustainability, just distribution and obligations to future generations…" (p.11), writes New Economy Law Center Fellow Joshua Farley in the introduction to a new book on ecological economics. In Beyond Uneconomic Growth, Farley provides an introductory synopsis on why a new economic system – inspired by Herman Daly's ecological economic principles – is needed to avoid complete ecosystem collapse. Another New Economy Law Center Fellow, Peter G. Brown, concludes the volume with an ethical perspective that positions humans as participants in, rather than masters of, the larger ecological community.
Joshua Farley and Deepak Malghan (ed.) Beyond Uneconomic Growth: Economics, Equity and the Ecological Predicament, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016, http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/eep/preview/book/isbn/9781783472499/
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Speth's State of the Nation November 11, 2019
ABA features NELC Fellow Mary Wood's climate change work October 31, 2019
Join us for Oct 8 Movie showing "Redefining Prosperity" with filmmaker, John De Graaf September 26, 2019
Please join NELC Fellow, Marta Ceroni, and John de Graaf, on October 8 at 6pm at the Ava Gallery, Lebanon, NH (come at 5:30PM if you want to enjoy some light refreshments) for a night of conversation in which John presents his latest movie "Redefining Prosperity: The Gold Rushes of Nevada City" a story of a community […]
Consum Cooperativa: Feeding 3 Million in the Spanish Mediterranean May 15, 2019
Can cooperative grocery stores compete with large investor-owned grocery chains? Consum, in Spain, shows it is possible to be a worker and consumer-owned grocery coop with strong sustainability practices AND be the largest grocery chain in the Spanish Mediterranean. Consum has more worker-owners in Spain than all of the worker owned cooperatives across every industry in […]
NELC fellow, Bill McKibben, talking about climate in The New Yorker; NELC co-founder, Gus Speth's response May 2, 2019
McKibben, Notes from a Remarkable Political Moment for Climate Change, read more. May 7, 2019 (Gus Speth). I greatly admire and agree with Bill McKibben's kick-off contribution. I have followed Bill into jail and would do so again, and agreeing with him in many contexts has proven graciously easy. I do want to lay out […]
Craft Beer: 100% Employee-Owned, Organic, and Powered by Renewables April 28, 2019
The craft beer market in the U.S. has exploded, but where can you find a company that is democratically owned, producing organic beer, and 100 percent powered by renewables? Cerveses Lluna brews its beer in Alcoi, Spain, where it is committed to creating good jobs, local sourcing, and sustainable production. NELC co-founder, Melissa Scanlan, interviewed […]
The Making Of A Democratic Economy- November 14th in Chase! November 12, 2018
The New Economy Law Center presents "The Making of a Democratic Economy" with speaker Marjorie Kelly, Senior Fellow and Executive Vice President of The Democracy Collaborative. At a time when the nation is hungry for a positive vision for our economy – when 71 percent of Americans say they believe the economic system is rigged against them – […]
Corporations Are People Too (And They Should Act Like It) October 4, 2018
With an analysis sure to challenge the assumptions of both progressives and conservatives, Greenfield explores corporations' claims to constitutional rights and the foundational conflicts about their obligations in society. He argues that a blanket opposition to corporate personhood is misguided, since it is consistent with both the purpose of corporations and the Constitution itself that […]
Zephyr Teachout speaks about Transforming Politics September 4, 2018
https://livestream.com/vermontlawschool/new-economy-forum/videos/166241450 With the upcoming midterms and so much energy put into politics, I thought it a good time to revisit the 4th talk in the Fall 2017 New Economy Law and Policy Forum. In it, Zephyr Teachout focuses on campaign finance and other reforms needed to transform politics in the US. For more resources about campaign […]
McKibben RADIO FREE VERMONT, A FABLE OF RESISTANCE, 2017 August 10, 2018
In his latest book (and first novel), NELC Fellow, Bill McKibben, takes his resistance angst and turns it into a love letter to Vermont, local craft beer, human-scale economies and decision making like "Town Meeting Day," and Ethan Allen. With humor, he tells a tale of seceding as a protest against the big impersonal political […]