This book documents the accumulation by American business interests of formidable legal capacities that allow them to take advantage of the outsized role of the courts in the American political economy. We explore the ways in which American employers have cultivated these capacities and now use them to shape a legal terrain that has increasingly skewed toward the interests of capital. Using case data and archival documents, we show that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center (NCLC) serves as a key hub in coordinating strategic litigation aimed both at insulating business interests from challenges by organized labor and government regulators, and at moving the law, incrementally, in a more business-friendly direction. The analysis corroborates Marc Galanter’s (1974) argument that over time, “repeat players” such as organized business can tilt the legal playing field in a profound way.

The talk will be followed by a reception.

SPEAKER

Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT, where her research examines American capitalism in comparative perspective within the political economy of rich democracies. Her latest book, Attention Shoppers! American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy (Princeton University Press, 2025), received the 2026 Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on US National Policy, and she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2026–27. She has served as President of the American Political Science Association, Chair of the Council for European Studies, and is a permanent external member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.