Welcome to Enabling Acts
What it is and why you might want to subscribe
There’s a growing body of legal scholarship on how to enable abundance and what stands in its way. Law professors, economists, and policy experts are studying the regulations, procedures, veto-points and governance deficiencies that block growth. They are proposing new solutions to unlock a greater supply of public infrastructure, energy, housing, healthcare, education, innovation and more.
This work is scattered across journals, working paper series, think tank reports and blogs. It is further siloed in fields as disparate as municipal zoning law and federal administrative law.
Enabling Acts will aggregate that varied scholarship into a newsletter on legal and policy research related to abundance. It will include writing on a wide range of topics including housing and land use, permitting reform, energy infrastructure, government contracting and procurement, immigration, intellectual property, and scientific innovation. If someone proposes legal reforms to enable building, growth, and innovation, then it belongs here.
The launch of this newsletter coincides with the Law of Abundance Conference at Yale in January 2025. My goal is to create a clearinghouse for this emerging field, similar to outlets like the Regulatory Review or the Law & Political Economy Blog. Over time, it may expand into hosting original content and symposia.
If you’re working on these topics, please subscribe and send me your recent or forthcoming papers at enablingacts@gmail.com or by responding to any post. I want to make this the go-to resource for anyone studying the intersection of law and abundance.