Law, Political Economy, and Contemporary Discourse on Inequality

In the previous chapter, we discussed the relationship between legislatorsLegislators and bureaucratsBureaucrats, illuminating how the entangled perspectiveEntangled perspective can complicate the traditional narrative that is commonly presumed to characterize this relationship. In this chapter, we turn to the judicial branchJudicial branch of government, and illustrate how the entangled perspective likewise complicates the common narrative about the boundaries of this branch of government. This is not just a hypothetical section. There are currently multiple branches of legal academicsLegal academics who suggest we can use the legal system to address problems they believe are ill-addressed by legislators and regulators. InequalityInequality is one such problem that is commonly mentioned, so we give special attention to modern policy discourse on inequality and intergenerational mobilityIntergenerational mobility to illustrate this policy discourse.