LPE@HLS is pleased to announce its inaugural round of funding for writing that advances the Freedom from Want agenda. Three awards of $7,000 each will be given to early-career scholars for papers that address the meaningful decommodification of access to basic needs in America.
Freedom from Want seeks enduring changes in the political and economic policies that determine access to basic resources such as healthy food, housing, healthcare, expansive lifelong education, water, air, energy, transportation, communications, child and elder care, freedom from physical violence, and the means for building a dignified life. We believe that the United States has the material and institutional resources necessary for every one of its inhabitants to live a life free from the threat of homelessness, hunger, preventable illness, toxic environments, debt, and state and interpersonal violence. Freedom from Want aims to assemble the intellectual resources necessary to realize real freedom through a combination of concrete and achievable policy proposals and political theory addressed to the structural inequities of the 21st century.
Freedom from Want can only result from the meaningful decommodification of basic needs and the creation of markets that are both embedded in social life and democratically controlled. This will require policymaking that takes struggle, conflict, politics, and coalition-building seriously. It will also require robust and imaginative theoretical contributions capable of shifting intellectual paradigms and introducing unorthodox ideas into the common political vocabulary.
We are interested in papers that apply a Law and Political Economy framework to the provision of needs broadly defined. We will consider work from within and outside the legal academy that assumes the interrelation of politics and the economy and takes seriously the role that law plays in shaping social relations. While we are interested in producing scalable, emblematic policies to achieve specific goals, we also acknowledge the capacity of abstract ideas to alter the political terrain and shift the horizon of practical possibility. We therefore solicit submissions from scholars across disciplines and methodologies.
This year’s prizes will be awarded for work that will be ready for submission to Law Reviews and other Peer-Reviewed Journals by February 15th. We will not consider proposals or incomplete work. Articles must include an abstract. Submissions are due by February 1st, 2026.
Please send your article and CV as separate PDF attachments to [email protected] with the subject line “Submission Freedom from Want”
Questions about the application process can be sent to [email protected]
