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Abstract
Is President Donald Trump appealing in part because he has made contracts seem like provisional arrangements likely to endure only insofar as they serve his (or putatively national) interests? Two political economy studies of U.S. workplaces and firms, one ethnographic and one historical, can begin to shed light. Ilana Gershon’s ethnography explores how people’s everyday legal and political consciousness is formed through their experiences of regulatory decision-making in a contract filled workplace. Sociologist Melinda Cooper’s historical account reveals how a turn to viewing corporations as a conglomeration of individual contracts paved the way for a veneration of autocratic rule. In making this argument, we contribute to this Symposium in two ways. First, we illustrate the value of an insight that has helped organize the field of law and political economy but not law and economics: namely, that people’s legal and political sensibilities are often shaped by their experiences in economic life. Second, we illustrate the value of interpretative social sciences, which has remained marginal in both fields. We argue that qualitative and ethnographic research methods are particularly useful in moments such as the political present in the United States when what can be assumed about political, legal, and class identities and categories is rapidly changing.
Recommended Citation
Cohen, Amy J. and Gershon, Ilana
(2026)
"Living Under Contract: An LPE Analysis of American Democracy,"
University of Chicago Law Review: Vol. 93:
Iss.
2, Article 2.
Available at:
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol93/iss2/2