Monday, April 18, 2022
Lesson From The Tax Court: What’s Excluded From The §132 Exclusion?
Tax Day is here! And what better way to observe the day than a lesson on §132, a lesson that evokes the ghost of Dan Rostenkowski, whose curmudgeonly visage appears to the right. For those who don’t know, Rostenkowski was the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1981 until 1994 when, in the great tradition of Illinois politicians, he was indicted on various counts of fraud, eventually pleading guilty to mail fraud. Yes, political corruption in Illinois actually has its own Wikipedia entry.
During his time as head of the House tax writing committee, Rostenkowski oversaw multiple major legislative changes. Perhaps his crowning glory was his role in the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which has long been viewed as a triumph (however short-lived) of sound tax reform.
Today’s lesson has its genesis in the earlier Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, PL 98-369, 98 Stat. 494. There, Congress wrote a new §132 to exclude from gross income a long list of traditional employee fringe benefits. In Douglas Mihalik and Wendy J. Mihalik v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2022-36 (Apr. 13, 2022) (Judge Gustafson), Mr. Mihalik received free airline tickets for himself and members of his family. He sought the exclusionary shelter of §132. While §132 is very broadly written to cover various family members of an employee, Judge Gustafson teaches us how some family members are excluded from the exclusion. Details below the fold.
April 18, 2022 in Bryan Camp, New Cases, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Practice And Procedure, Tax Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0)
Heald: The Law Review Scam—Humanely Ending Law School Exceptionalism
TaxProf Blog Op-Ed: The Law Review Scam: Humanely Ending Law School Exceptionalism, by Paul Heald (Illinois; Google Scholar):
Most American law school professors will tell you that anonymous peer-review of article submissions is bunk. They purport to have a better method for determining which articles land in the most respected journals—delegate acceptance decisions entirely to law students who operate their own law journals. You heard correctly. It’s law students, not Harvard law professors, who decide what gets published in Harvard Law Review (and in all of the other 654 student-edited law journals in the US).[1] It’s time to consider change.
The Power of Inertia: The law review system emerged in the late 19th century at a time when law schools were professional training grounds with little or no pretense of producing scholarly research on a par with other university departments. Articles were devoted to nuts-and-bolts legal questions, often aimed at practitioners, and law students provided a real service to the profession by publishing legal updates on a regular basis (very frequently authored by the professors at the same institution as the student editors).
Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, law schools moved beyond the trade-school model and aimed to assimilate themselves into the traditional research mission of the university. Articles became more scholarly, more theoretical, more interdisciplinary, and more empirical. Unfortunately, the law review system did not evolve in parallel with the maturation of law school research ambitions. Law students who probably did a competent job in 1920 of reading the cases and statutes discussed in a 5-page submission (the average article at top journals is now 63 pages)[2] cannot in 2022 be expected to judge the originality of a complex interdisciplinary article or check the regression analysis conducted in empirical research.
To complicate matters, student-run law reviews do not operate under anonymity and the rigor that produces. The most important document submitted to the student journal is the submitter’s resume—containing information about the author’s prior works and often the author’s demographic characteristics—which serves as a proxy for article quality and desirability in the eyes of insufficiently knowledgeable or experienced student readers.
From the professorial standpoint, another huge advantage of the law review system is the number of journals associated with law schools that a student-operated system generates: 654 at last count. That’s approximately one journal for about every 14 law professors. As a legal academic, you never have to worry about getting published. It’s just a question of where.
Despite the implausible nature of their hidebound system, law schools demand that student-selected scholarship be counted toward tenure equally with the peer-reviewed publications of their colleagues in history, sociology, psychology, economics and the like.
The High Academic Price: Unfortunately, the delegation of labor to partially educated students comes with a significant academic price.
International Disharmony—Not surprisingly, the vast majority of law journals in English-speaking jurisdictions are peer-edited or refereed: (Australia [80 of 81]; UK [202 of 209]; and Canada [53 of 60]. Europeans tell me that they won’t publish in US law reviews because lack of peer review means the publication won’t count (or will count less) for tenure. Clearly, American professors could change if they were willing to invest more time in serving as peer reviewers; they simply refuse to.
Repetition and Waste—In order to convince a student to accept your article, you must first provide enough background information so that the student reviewer understands your eventual argument. With technical subjects, this can take up the first 50 pages of a submission. Since law professors often write with an eye to seducing student editors as much as enlightening other professors, this wasteful and repetitious bloat is inevitable. In the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, where peer review is the norm, the average length of law articles in their top journals is much shorter—around 35 pages.
Moral Hazard—With a click of an icon on Scholasticahq.com, a law professor can submit to 100+ journals at the same time. Many professors have no intention of accepting an offer from journals ranked #75-#100, but a quick acceptance allows one to request “expedited review” at a higher-rated journal, a leveraging process which is often repeated multiple times before the final acceptance at the most highly ranked journal. Untenured professors are coached on how to play a game that obviously wastes limited reviewing resources, chokes an already overwhelmed system, and creates genuine moral hazard.
Overclaiming—Not surprisingly, students are more likely to reward authors who make daring claims to originality (which are sometimes softened after acceptance). The moral hazards here are significant given the benefit of submitting, “the first article to ever . . .” Even the most well-known journals are routinely tricked into accepting superficially sparkling pieces that make no significant contribution to the literature.
Lack of Peer Input—Students are often quite good at technical editing and improving the flow and coherence of a submission. Except in rare circumstances, they lack the knowledge to make substantive improvements to a piece. When I publish in peer-reviewed journals, I get the advice of an expert reader on how to improve my piece. Sure, “revise and resubmit” requires extra work, but legal academics benefit from dialogue with their peers in the editing process.
Stunted Professional Development—As the co-editor-in-chief of a peer-reviewed journal, reading submissions enables me easily to follow trends in my discipline. Editing is an essential way to stay abreast of one’s field and converse around the world, unrealized by all but a handful of law professors.
Subject-Matter-Narrowing Effects—Every student on the managing board of the law review has taken core subjects like constitutional law, torts, administrative law, and civil procedure, making these safer subjects for scholarship. Woe betide the teacher of comparative law, partnership tax, banking law, admiralty, or insurance, who must compete with more easily digested fare. The existence of less prestigious specialty subject-matter journals helps established professors in technical fields, but untenured faculty are routinely advised not to publish outside of generalist journals.
Cloning the Elites—Because law students lack comprehensive knowledge of the topics they judge, they often rely on proxies for quality. They read resumes and know whether the author is chaired Professor Jane Smith of Harvard (J.D., Yale Law School) or Assistant Professor Mary Doe of Nowhere State (J.D. Middling College of Law). Given student ignorance of the vast bodies of literature underlying all good articles, it’s predictable for them to use prestige as a proxy for quality. Moreover, students at higher-ranked schools understand that promoting scholarship from elite schools will reinforce the elite nature of their degrees. There’s a reason why 57% of all law professors come from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, or UChicago, and why 95% of all professors at the top ten schools graduated from a top ten institution, most having served on the board of their law review.
A Simple But Ambitious Solution: Over a five-year period, universities should phase in a prospective rule that only peer-reviewed articles count toward tenure or promotion. Because an insufficient number of peer-reviewed law journals exist in the US, law professors will quickly be forced to take over the tough job of article selection from students. The ridiculous number of law reviews would likely also decline for lack of professor editors. For the reasons explained below, I advocate no other change to the student experience. In addition, any change should be prospective and not punish law profs for having adhered to prior norms.
Confronting the Inevitable, Desperate Pushback: Any attempt to reverse well-established professional norms will be immediately and vigorously attacked. Here are the six arguments I hear all the time from my fellow law professors when I try to get them on the peer review train:
The law review experience is important for students!—The law review experience is an intrinsically valuable experience, as well as an important credentialing mechanism. Therefore, when law professors take over the article selection process, they should continue to let students have a voice, but no vote. The rest of the student experience can be maintained in its present form.
Peer review takes too long!—Sometimes, but it doesn’t have to. The peer-reviewed journals I serve on get back to authors very quickly. Once law professors take over article selection from their students, they can assure review is speedy. Each discipline has its own norms, and the adoption of a new system would provide fertile opportunities for law professors to improve peer review.
Peer review is political!—Yeah? You think law students aren’t political?
Open access is costly!—What does that have to do with peer review? Most law reviews are currently open access, so just keep them that way.
Some journals do ask professors for input!—On rare occasions, but these informal requests hardly constitute true peer review.
Conclusion: Law professors have learned how to play a complex and tricky game. Indeed, most of them having been playing it since they were students. Inertia is the most powerful force in the university, and law professors will object to serving on editorial boards, reading reams of their peers' work, and deciding whether a contribution is really original or not. But like a lot of bitter medicine, it will be good for them and for the quality of research they produce.
[1] Law review data in this article comes primary from here and some data collected independently by my RA’s.
[2] Rob Wiley & Melanie Knapp, How to Increase Citations to Legal Scholarship, 18 Ohio St. Tech. L.J. 157 (2021).
April 18, 2022 in Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education | Permalink
Being #1 Isn’t Always A Good Thing—Loneliness Among Lawyers
Tom Sharbaugh (Penn State), Being #1 Isn’t Always a Good Thing—Loneliness Among Lawyers:
Success as a lawyer can come at the expense of personal relationships. Is it worth the price?
Few of my former partners in the global firm where I worked would understand my transition from a profits-first managing partner to a speaker and commentator on lawyer well-being. How could this have happened? Have I gone soft? Quite the contrary—I remain on my mission to live a good life.
Before offering my views on law practice and lawyer careers, it’s useful for me to state my background upfront so that readers know my biases. For about three decades, I was a partner in a global law firm, practicing in a wide variety of business areas (frankly, wherever the clients led me). For the last 15 years of that run, I was the full-time managing partner with firm-wide responsibility for the day-to-day business of the firm. At the end of my third term as a managing partner (at age 62), I looked for another career and began teaching at a large university’s law school, where I started a legal clinic for startup and early-stage businesses.
My late-stage career change caused me to consider whether many of the hard-charging senior and retired law partners would be happier if they sought out some activity that gave them a purpose. This led me down the “rabbit hole” of lawyer loneliness as I listened to the many podcasts and interviews with Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States. See, e.g., Arthur Brooks, “How to Know You’re Lonely,” How to Build a Happy Life, Ep. 2 (Oct 12, 2021). Then I read Dr. Murthy’s book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connect in a Sometimes Lonely World (2020).
As I explored the research on loneliness, this fact consistently jumped out at me: lawyers rank #1 in loneliness, not retired lawyers trying to keep busy, but lawyers generally. In a 2018 Harvard Business Review article, researchers from the consulting firm BetterUp shared the results of their survey of over 1,600 workers. “In a breakdown of loneliness and social support rates by profession,” the authors note, “legal practice was the loneliest kind of work.” Shawn Achor, et al., “America’s Loneliest Workers, According to Research,“ Harv Bus Rev, Mar 19, 2018. ...
There are no doubt many reasons why some law students transform into hyper-competitive, self-focused, success-driven lawyers. This extrinsic success has come at a price—lawyers who become successful under the measures of income and status are less likely to have close personal relationships and, therefore, more likely to suffer from loneliness.
April 18, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup
Saturday:
-
This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
- President Biden And Vice President Harris Release Their 2022 Tax Returns
- Next Week’s Tax Workshops
- Recent Law Grads Have Had $30,000 Of Their Student Loan Debt Cancelled
Sunday:
- NY Times Op-Ed: What Good Friday And Easter Mean For Black Americans
- NY Times Op-Ed: How A Cancer Diagnosis Makes Jesus’ Death And Resurrection Mean More
- WSJ Op-Ed: What Saint Dismas Can Teach Us About Good Friday And Easter
- NY Times Op-Ed: Imagine A Bible With No Moses, No Story Of The Exodus
- The Top Five New Tax Papers
April 18, 2022 in Legal Education, Tax, Weekend Roundup | Permalink
Sunday, April 17, 2022
NY Times Op-Ed: What Good Friday And Easter Mean For Black Americans
New York Times Op-Ed: What Good Friday and Easter Mean for Black Americans, by Esau McCaulley (Wheaton; author, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (2020)):
It’s common, even in Christian circles, to think of the afterlife as a disembodied bliss in a paradise filled with naked baby angels tickling the strings of harps as our souls bounce from cloud to cloud. But Christianity has never taught a disembodied future in heaven. Our beliefs are more radical.
We believe that one day the entire created world will be transformed to become what God always intended it to be: free of pain, death and sorrow. It will be an earth that still contains some of the things of this life: food, art, mountains, lakes, beaches and culture. There will be hip-hop, spirituals, soul music and grits (with cheese, salt and pepper — not sugar) in the renewed creation. Christians believe that our bodies will be resurrected from the dead to live in this transformed earth. Like the earth itself, these bodies will be transfigured or perfected, but they will still be our bodies.
All of this — the painful, unjust reality of bodily suffering and death in this world and the glorious embodied future that will come in the next — is on my mind as I prepare to observe Good Friday and celebrate Easter. The last few years have borne witness to an overflow of Black suffering. ...
Physical suffering ... is also at the core of the Christian story. Good Friday, the day when Christians remember Jesus’ crucifixion, highlights what happened to his body. It was mutilated and put on display. Crucifixion was a tool of Roman imperial terror, a practice largely reserved for slaves, non-citizens or those convicted of high crimes such as treason. It was intended to remind the disinherited about the power that the state had over the bodies of all under its dominion.
James Cone’s important work of theology The Cross and the Lynching Tree connects the crucifixion of Jesus with the lynching of Black bodies: both are manifestations of evil inflicted as a means of control. Since the time of the hush harbors, Black Christians have found solace in the idea that the God they worshiped knew the trouble we’d seen. He experienced it himself. The hip-hop artist Swoope said, “Christ died in the Blackest way possible, with his hands up and his momma there watching him."
April 17, 2022 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink
NY Times Op-Ed: How A Cancer Diagnosis Makes Jesus’ Death And Resurrection Mean More
New York Times Op-Ed: How a Cancer Diagnosis Makes Jesus’ Death and Resurrection Mean More, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):
I’ve talked to Timothy Keller several times since he was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer almost two years ago. ... Keller moved to New York City in 1989 with his wife, Kathy, and their three young sons to start a church from scratch. It was a risky move to plant a traditional, evangelical Presbyterian church in a secular, progressive city. But Redeemer grew, has become one of the best-known churches in the country and birthed City to City, a global church planting network.
Keller has also written over two dozen books, most recently Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter. David Brooks recently described Tim as having “one of the most impressive and important minds in the evangelical world.”
Tim said that when he received his cancer diagnosis, “The doctor looked at us and said, ‘I want you to realize that when it comes to pancreatic cancer, you’re going to die from this.’” The vast majority of patients live less than a year after diagnosis. Tim described that day itself as a kind of death. ...
As many Christians around the world begin Holy Week, I wanted to hear more about how Tim’s diagnosis changed how he thinks about life, death and this week leading up to Easter. In the midst of ongoing chemotherapy, he kindly agreed to this interview, which has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. ...
April 17, 2022 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink
WSJ Op-Ed: What Saint Dismas Can Teach Us About Good Friday And Easter
Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: For Lent, I’m Reading Up on the Christian Saints, by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):
During Lent, I have stepped up my reading about the lives of Christian saints. The exercise has been strangely dispiriting, not because their virtue isn’t heroic, but because it’s so heroic. This is especially true for the lives of the martyrs, those who died for their faith. ...
Would I show such courage in the face of persecution, compassion for my tormentors ...? [N]o. Their standard of holiness is otherworldly.
This is why the lesson of St. Dismas, better known as the Good Thief recorded in the Gospel of Luke, is so important to me. Dismas was the criminal who was crucified to the right of Jesus on Good Friday. Recognizing his own culpability at the end of a dissolute life, Dismas humbly asked Jesus to remember him in paradise. Jesus assured Dismas he would be with him that very day in heaven, making the lowly brigand the only mortal whose hallowed forwarding address was confirmed by the Bible. ...
April 17, 2022 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink
NY Times Op-Ed: Imagine A Bible With No Moses, No Story Of The Exodus
New York Times Op-Ed: Imagine a Bible With No Moses, No Story of the Exodus, by Sharon Brous (Founder & Senior Rabbi of Ikar, a Jewish community based in Los Angeles; Speaker, The Intersection of Faith, Social Justice, and Racial Reconciliation, Pepperdine Caruso Law School Dean's Speaker Series (Jan. 26, 2021)):
One copy of the Slave Bible, first published in 1807, sits today in the permanent collection of the Fisk University Library in Nashville. Originally intended for use in worship by enslaved people in the British West Indies, the biblical text was carefully redacted to exclude all references to the Exodus from Egypt. Imagine a Bible with no Moses, no burning bush, no Israelites fleeing slavery, no split sea and no revelation at Sinai.
This version of the text, gutted of that central narrative, was designed to fulfill a two-part objective: to introduce enslaved people to Christianity and to preserve the system of slavery. The problem was that the Exodus story—bearing the promise of freedom over slavery, dignity over degradation—is powerful and dangerous. The slaveholders were surely concerned that enslaved people would see themselves in the Israelite struggle for liberation, that they would find strength in God’s identification with the oppressed and be inspired by the triumph of faith over even one of the strongest regimes of the ancient world. They may have feared that this story would plant the seeds of possibility, if not the seeds of rebellion.
This week, Jews around the world will sit at Passover Seder tables and retell the very narrative stricken from that Slave Bible: the Exodus from Egypt. In Hebrew it is yetziat mitzrayim, literally “emerging or leaving from the narrow place.” This, our origin story, has animated and sustained the Jewish people for thousands of years. It’s read not as a remembrance of a one-time event but as an eternal promise, a frame of reference for all future struggles — including those we face in our time and our own country. ...
April 17, 2022 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink
The Top Five New Tax Papers
There is quite a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with new papers debuting on the list at #4 and #5. The #1 paper is #153 among 16,755 tax papers in all-time downloads:
[1,964 Downloads] Pillar 2: Rule Order, Incentives, and Tax Competition, by Michael Devereux (Oxford; Google Scholar), John Vella (Oxford) & Heydon Wardell-Burrus (Oxford)
- [781 Downloads] Amazon and the State Aid Tax Saga, by Leopoldo Parada (Leeds; Google Scholar)
- [425 Downloads] How Treasury and the IRS Have Allowed High-Net-Worth Taxpayers to Exploit Stepped-Up Basis on Intergenerational Wealth Transfers, and How They Can Stop It: Answers to Question for the Record, by Daniel Hemel (Chicago; Google Scholar)
- [265 Downloads] Permanent Establishment and Fixed Establishment in the Context of the Subsidiary and the Digital Economy, by Stoycho Dulevski (University of National and World Economy; Google Scholar)
- [229 Downloads] Digital Assets: A Call To Action, by Johan David Michels (Queen Mary University of London; Google Scholar), Sharon Hartung (Technologist & Founder, Your Digital Undertaker) & Christopher Millard (Queen Mary University of London)
April 17, 2022 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship, Top 5 Downloads | Permalink
Saturday, April 16, 2022
This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: 50 Ways To Lose Your Interest Abatement Request
- Chronicle of Higher Education, Do the ‘U.S. News’ Rankings Rely on Dubious Data?
- Colin Diver, The Rankings Farce
- Derek Muller (Iowa), Mean February 2022 MBE Score Falls, Tying Record Low
- McSweeney's, Selected Negative Teaching Evaluations Of Jesus Christ
- Chronicle of Higher Education, What’s Going On at Yale Law School? A Lot of Drama
- Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2023 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings
- Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2023 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings v. Overall Rankings
- Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Harvard Journal Of Sports And Entertainment Law Honors The Memory Of Cedric Weston Halloran (2000-2021)
- 2023 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:
April 16, 2022 in Legal Education, Tax, Weekly Top 10 TaxProf Blog Posts | Permalink
President Biden And Vice President Harris Release Their 2022 Tax Returns
President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris released their tax returns yesterday.
- Blomberg, Bidens Report $610,702 in Income Last Year, Trim Charity Giving
- CNN, President Biden and Vice President Harris Release Their 2021 Tax Returns
- New York Post, Joe and Jill Biden Made More Money, Paid Less Tax in 2021 Than ‘20, Returns Show
- New York Times, Biden’s Tax Forms Show He and the First Lady Earned $610,702 in 2021
April 16, 2022 in Celebrity Tax Lore, Tax, Tax News | Permalink
Next Week’s Tax Workshops
Thursday, April 21: Stefanie Stantcheva (Harvard; Google Scholar) will present Wealth and Taxation in the United States (with Sacha Dray (London School of Economics) & Camille Landais (London School of Economics)) as part of the OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks. This event does not require registration.
Friday, April 22: Abdoulaye Ndiaye (NYU; Google Scholar) will present Redistribution with Performance Pay (with Pawel Doligalski (Bristol; Google Scholar) & Nicolas Werquin (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Google Scholar) as part of the Florida Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Hasen.
April 16, 2022 in Colloquia, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink
Recent Law Grads Have Had $30,000 Of Their Student Loan Debt Cancelled
Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget, How Much Student Debt Has Already Been Cancelled?:
Though some policymakers continue to propose cancelling some, most, or all student debt, a great deal of student debt has already effectively been cancelled. Overall, we estimate the equivalent of $5,500 per borrower will have been cancelled by the scheduled end of the student loan payment pause on May 1, at a cost of more than $100 billion. Extending the repayment pause further will cost an additional $50 billion per year, and policymakers should reject calls to do so.
Aside from some targeted cancellation by the current and previous administrations, nearly every borrower has benefited from interest cancellation during the current repayment moratorium while higher-than-expected inflation has eroded current balances. However, that benefit has been highly uneven and significantly more regressive than the already-regressive $10,000 across-the-board debt cancellation proposed by then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign.
For example, we estimate a typical recent medical school graduate will effectively receive nearly $50,000 of debt cancellation, a recent law school graduate will get $30,000 of cancellation, and a recent master’s degree recipient will get $13,500. At the same time, a recent bachelor’s degree recipient will get $4,500 of debt cancellation, someone who just completed an associate’s degree will receive $3,500, and a person who was unable to complete their undergraduate degree will get $2,000.
April 16, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
Friday, April 15, 2022
Shay: The Deceptive Allure Of Taxing "Residual Profits"
Stephen E. Shay (Boston College; Google Scholar), The Deceptive Allure of Taxing "Residual Profits", 75 Bull. Intl. Taxn. 527 (2021):
This article outlines the traditional justifications for a residual profits business tax base and evaluates its role in the OECD/G20 Pillar One proposal to allocate income to market countries. The article concludes that basing the allocation of profits to market countries on multinationals’ residual profits would be inferior to allocating a portion of total corporate profits.
April 15, 2022 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship | Permalink
Weekly Legal Education Roundup
David Bernstein, A Remarkable Outbreak of Antisemitism at NYU Law School
- Bloomberg Law, Experiential Legal Education: An Antidote to Law Student Stress
- Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2023 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings
- Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2023 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings v. Overall Rankings
- Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Harvard Journal Of Sports And Entertainment Law Honors The Memory Of Cedric Weston Halloran (2000-2021)
- Chronicle of Higher Education, Do the ‘U.S. News’ Rankings Rely on Dubious Data?
- Chronicle of Higher Education, What’s Going On at Yale Law School? A Lot of Drama
April 15, 2022 in Legal Education, Scott Fruehwald, Weekly Legal Ed Roundup | Permalink
Tax Policy In The Biden Administration
Bloomberg, Companies Ask for ‘Safe Harbors’ to Ease Burden of Global Minimum Tax
- Bloomberg, Corporations Could Pay Nearly 14% More Under Global Tax Deal, IMF Says
- Bloomberg, Democrats Ask the IRS Why Tax Audits for the Poor Have Doubled
- Bloomberg, Taxing the Wealthy: Is Biden’s Minimum Tax the Answer?
- Brookings, Are Taxes Complicated? Compared to What?
April 15, 2022 in Tax, Tax Policy in the Biden Administration | Permalink
2023 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings v. Overall Rankings
Following up on yesterday's post, 2023 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings:
Here are the law schools whose U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Ranking most exceeds their overall U.S. News Ranking:
| School | Specialty Rank | Overall Rank | Difference | |
| 1 | American | 16 | 73 | +57 |
| 2 | Brooklyn | 43 | 98 | +55 |
| 3 | Illinois-Chicago | 94 | 147 | +53 |
| 4 | Santa Clara | 81 | 133 | +52 |
| 4 | Suffolk | 70 | 122 | +52 |
| 6 | Denver | 33 | 78 | +45 |
| 6 | Seattle | 71 | 116 | +45 |
| 8 | Pace | 98 | 142 | +44 |
| 9 | Chicago-Kent | 57 | 94 | +37 |
| 10 | Mitchell | Hamline | 111 | 147 | +36 |
| 10 | Temple | 27 | 63 | +36 |
| 12 | Hofstra | 83 | 118 | +35 |
| 13 | Howard | 65 | 98 | +33 |
| 13 | Rutgers | 53 | 86 | +33 |
| 15 | Baltimore | 90 | 122 | +32 |
| 15 | Loyola-New Orleans | 101 | 133 | +32 |
| 15 | UC-Hastings | 19 | 51 | +32 |
| 18 | Pacific | 102 | 133 | +31 |
| 19 | CUNY | 103 | 133 | +30 |
| 20 | South Texas | 118 | 147 | +29 |
| 21 | Stetson | 84 | 111 | +27 |
| 21 | Widener (DE) | 120 | 147 | +27 |
| 23 | Loyola-L.A. | 41 | 67 | +26 |
| 23 | San Francisco | 121 | 147 | +26 |
| 25 | New York Law School | 104 | 129 | +25 |
| 26 | UC-Irvine | 13 | 37 | +24 |
| 27 | Loyola-Chicago | 51 | 73 | +22 |
| 27 | Quinnipiac | 125 | 147 | +22 |
| 29 | Houston | 38 | 58 | +20 |
| 30 | Miami | 54 | 73 | +19 |
| 31 | Fordham | 20 | 37 | +17 |
| 32 | Case Western | 62 | 78 | +16 |
| 32 | Syracuse | 87 | 103 | +16 |
| 34 | George Washington | 10 | 25 | +15 |
| 34 | Lewis & Clark | 73 | 88 | +15 |
| 36 | DePaul | 91 | 105 | +14 |
| 36 | Georgia State | 64 | 78 | +14 |
| 36 | Univ. of Washington | 35 | 49 | +14 |
| 39 | Georgetown | 1 | 14 | +13 |
| 39 | Ohio State | 17 | 30 | +13 |
| 41 | Southwestern | 135 | 147 | +12 |
| 41 | Vermont | 130 | 142 | +12 |
| 43 | Akron | 136 | 147 | +11 |
| 43 | Michigan State | 80 | 91 | +11 |
| 43 | UNLV | 56 | 67 | +11 |
| 46 | Maryland | 37 | 47 | +10 |
| 46 | Northwestern | 3 | 13 | +10 |
| 46 | Nova SE | 137 | 147 | +10 |
| 46 | Willamette | 119 | 129 | +10 |
| 50 | Golden Gate | 138 | 147 | +9 |
| 50 | UCLA | 6 | 15 | +9 |
Here are the law schools whose U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Ranking most trails their overall U.S. News Ranking:
April 15, 2022 in Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
Tax Policy Center Hosts Virtual Conference Today On Global Corporate Tax Reform: Why It’s Important and What It Will Do (And Not Do)
The Tax Policy Center hosts a virtual conference on Global Corporate Tax Reform: Why It’s Important and What It Will Do (And Not Do) today at 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. EDT (registration):
In the fall of 2021, the U.S. and over 130 nations representing more than 90 percent of global GDP agreed to change the way multinational corporations are taxed. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the two-pillar OECD/G-20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) agreement will end the “damaging race to the bottom on corporate taxation” that each year deprives countries of billions of dollars in tax revenue. Pillar 1 will for the first time allocate a share of the largest multinationals’ profits to countries where their goods are consumed. Pillar 2 will combat tax competition by encouraging countries to adopt a global minimum tax on corporations’ foreign income at a rate of 15 percent.
On Friday, April 15, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center will host an event to explain the significance of the agreement; how it will affect multinational corporations, advanced economies, and developing economies; and the prospects for its implementation.
During the live event, the audience may submit questions at slido using the code #GlobalTax or join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #GlobalTax.
Speakers:
- Lily L. Batchelder (U.S. Treasury)
- Dhammika Dharmapala (Chicago; Google Scholar)
- Lilian Faulhaber (Georgetown; Google Scholar)
- Alexander Klemm (IMF; Google Scholar)
- Pam Olson (PwC)
- David Wessel (Brookings Institution)
April 15, 2022 in Conferences, Tax, Tax Conferences | Permalink
Anti-Semitism Roils NYU Law School
Washington Free Beacon, Under Federal Scrutiny, NYU Law School Faces Uproar Over Anti-Semitism:
New York University School of Law may be legally obligated to punish some of its star students after nearly a dozen student groups signed a statement that defended terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and bemoaned the "Zionist grip on the media."
The statement, drafted by NYU Law School’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, has elicited harassment complaints from Jewish students who say that the letter—and some of the responses it sparked from students—constituted vicious anti-Semitic attacks. ...
NYU may have no choice but to punish these students because the university in 2020 agreed to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward anti-Semitism as part of a settlement with the Department of Education’s civil rights office, which was investigating a string of anti-Semitic incidents at the elite scool. The agreement obligates NYU to "take all necessary actions, including pursuant to its student discipline process," to address anti-Semitism on campus. Should the Biden administration decide to enforce the terms of that agreement, inaction could jeopardize NYU’s federal funding under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The law school told students on Tuesday that it was investigating the harassment complaints "as required by our policies." But some students doubt the investigation will amount to much.
David Lat (Original Jurisdiction), NYU Law Erupts In Controversy Over Alleged Anti-Semitism:
April 15, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Mann & Adams-Schoen Present Targeting Plastics Pollution With Taxes Today At Oregon
Roberta Mann (Oregon) & Sarah Adams-Schoen (Oregon) present Targeting Plastics Pollution with Taxes at Oregon today as part of its Oregon Law Perspectives Series (register here):
By 2050, the weight of plastic pollution in the ocean is projected to exceed the weight of the fish. What can we do about this? Professors Roberta Mann (Tax) and Sarah Adams-Schoen (Environmental Law) will discuss marine plastic pollution—the extent of the problem, the inadequacy of current approaches, and possible tax solutions.
These experts in their field will examine the possibilities of properly designed environmental taxation to serve as an efficient, effective solution to the plastics pollution problem.
April 14, 2022 in Colloquia, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship, Tax Workshops | Permalink
What’s Going On At Yale Law School? A Lot Of Drama
Chronicle of Higher Education, What’s Going On at Yale Law School? A Lot of Drama:
Yale Law School has found itself in the news a lot lately. That’s not so much because it was once again ranked as the No. 1 law school in the country, or because of a new program that will cover tuition for low-income students, or because it recently admitted the most diverse class in its nearly 200-year history.
Instead, it’s usually because something has gone horribly awry.
Case in point: Last month student protesters disrupted an event at the school [Kristen Waggoner (General Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom]. ..
Last fall Yale Law also made headlines when a student, Trent Colbert, sent a party invitation to members of the Native American Law Students Association in which he referred to the party’s location as a “Trap House” ...
And then there’s dinner-gate. Last April I wrote about the dubiously sourced allegations that Amy Chua, a Yale Law professor who needs no further introduction, was hosting drunken soirees at her house despite Covid-19 restrictions and possibly in violation of an agreement she’d made with the dean ...
Yale isn’t the only law school dealing with less-than-ideal publicity of late. Last month, at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, protesters refused to let Ilya Shapiro, a senior lecturer at Georgetown University’s law school, speak at a Federalist Society event ...
Some professors lay the blame at Gerken’s feet. “I have the sinking feeling that the values of the school are being eroded under this deanship,” one faculty member told me. Another said Gerken is a “genuinely nice person who doesn’t like telling people hard truths to their face.” The critics, who sought anonymity, basically accused the dean of repeatedly caving in to progressive students. ...
April 14, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
Inequality And Thomas Piketty's Accounting Error
Following up on last week's post, Thomas Piketty Thinks America Is Primed For Wealth Redistribution: Wall Street Journal op-ed: Inequality and the Piketty Accounting Error, by Phillip W. Magness (American Institute for Economic Research; Google Scholar) & Vincent Geloso (George Mason; Google Scholar):
The political left’s love affair with steep progressive taxation got an academic boost with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s bestselling 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Appealing to the New Deal era, Mr. Piketty proposed a simple explanation and remedy for rising economic inequality: The concentration of income among the top 1% could be mitigated by strategically targeting wealth with the tax system.
Mr. Piketty based his theory on a historical argument taken from his own empirical work with fellow economist Emmanuel Saez. When Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt hiked the top marginal income-tax rate to 91% during the New Deal and World War II, they allegedly broke up the concentration of the capital stock at the top of the income ladder. Inequality declined to a midcentury trough, where it remained until the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s. Inequality then rebounded to form a centurylong U-shaped pattern. The solution, then, is to restore tax rates to their FDR levels.
But the Piketty-Saez theory is less a matter of history than an accounting error caused by their misunderstanding of World War II-era tax statistics. That’s the main conclusion of a new analysis of top income concentration in the U.S. between 1917 and 1960, which we recently published in the Economic Journal [How Pronounced Is the U-curve? Revisiting Income Inequality in the United States, 1917-1960].
Progressives embraced Messrs. Piketty and Saez’s historical account after it appeared in an influential academic paper in 2003. ...
It’s true that income inequality declined in the early part of the 20th century, but the cause had more to do with the economic devastation of the Great Depression than the New Deal tax regime. ...
The nearby chart shows the results for the top 1% of income earners. In our series, inequality rose between 1917 and 1928, confirming the “Roaring ’20s” boom. The crash of 1929 emerges as the precipitating event of the “great leveling”—mainly due to severe capital losses among the wealthy during the Depression.
2023 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings
The new 2023 U.S. News Specialty Rankings include the rankings for 13 specialty programs at 192 law schools. Here are the Top 100 law schools, determined by giving equal weight to each of the 13 separate specialty rankings:
- Business/Corporate Law
- Clinical Law
- Constitutional Law
- Contracts/Commercial Law
- Criminal Law
- Dispute Resolution
- Environmental Law
- Health Law
- Intellectual Property Law
- International Law
- Legal Writing
- Tax Law
- Trial Advocacy
| School | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | Avg. | |
| 1 | Georgetown | 10 | 1 | 10 | 11 | 3 | 20 | 7 | 7 | 18 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 16 | 8.8 |
| 2 | NYU | 1 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 20 | 5 | 44 | 3 | 1 | 84 | 1 | 38 | 16.2 |
| 3 | Northwestern | 14 | 17 | 14 | 12 | 17 | 4 | 38 | 44 | 19 | 18 | 31 | 3 | 16 | 19.0 |
| 4 | UC-Berkeley | 1 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 2 | 43 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 7 | 115 | 24 | 10 | 20.0 |
| 5 | Michigan | 9 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 12 | 70 | 41 | 17 | 19 | 7 | 10 | 6 | 52 | 20.5 |
| 6 | UCLA | 7 | 26 | 11 | 15 | 8 | 15 | 1 | 23 | 15 | 12 | 128 | 6 | 6 | 21.0 |
| 7 | Harvard | 1 | 26 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 15 | 2 | 182 | 9 | 38 | 22.4 |
| 8 | Stanford | 6 | 15 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 15 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 10 | 149 | 9 | 61 | 23.0 |
| 9 | Virginia | 10 | 64 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 22 | 29 | 29 | 25 | 6 | 50 | 5 | 52 | 23.9 |
| 10 | George Washington | 27 | 23 | 21 | 34 | 28 | 47 | 13 | 23 | 5 | 10 | 39 | 27 | 31 | 25.2 |
| 11 | Duke | 14 | 35 | 11 | 16 | 14 | 56 | 17 | 21 | 12 | 12 | 39 | 18 | 67 | 25.5 |
| 12 | Penn | 5 | 26 | 14 | 7 | 3 | 22 | 44 | 20 | 12 | 14 | 74 | 18 | 89 | 26.8 |
| 13 | UC-Irvine | 44 | 5 | 18 | 27 | 24 | 22 | 34 | 29 | 19 | 18 | 10 | 9 | 106 | 28.1 |
| 14 | Texas | 17 | 35 | 11 | 12 | 14 | 22 | 31 | 33 | 19 | 21 | 104 | 15 | 38 | 28.6 |
| 15 | Columbia | 1 | 26 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 22 | 7 | 38 | 15 | 3 | 174 | 9 | 89 | 30.5 |
| 16 | American | 56 | 3 | 40 | 45 | 24 | 43 | 44 | 16 | 8 | 7 | 62 | 55 | 3 | 31.2 |
| 17 | Ohio State | 39 | 64 | 21 | 27 | 12 | 1 | 56 | 17 | 36 | 47 | 21 | 34 | 52 | 32.8 |
| 18 | Washington Univ. | 20 | 17 | 19 | 16 | 32 | 38 | 68 | 29 | 45 | 21 | 74 | 34 | 20 | 33.3 |
| 19 | UC-Hastings | 32 | 20 | 33 | 27 | 32 | 9 | 21 | 12 | 28 | 27 | 160 | 20 | 26 | 34.4 |
| 20 | Fordham | 18 | 17 | 30 | 20 | 18 | 13 | 73 | 65 | 25 | 21 | 115 | 28 | 7 | 34.6 |
| 21 | North Carolina | 23 | 26 | 21 | 20 | 18 | 56 | 41 | 23 | 55 | 62 | 10 | 20 | 89 | 35.7 |
| 22 | Yale | 12 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 8 | 56 | 26 | 11 | 63 | 4 | 180 | 20 | 79 | 36.1 |
| 23 | Arizona State | 56 | 73 | 40 | 45 | 28 | 13 | 17 | 13 | 55 | 32 | 4 | 39 | 61 | 36.6 |
| 24 | Vanderbilt | 12 | 35 | 17 | 16 | 14 | 32 | 7 | 33 | 45 | 17 | 128 | 45 | 79 | 36.9 |
| 25 | Boston Univ. | 20 | 26 | 21 | 27 | 28 | 84 | 68 | 5 | 11 | 39 | 62 | 15 | 89 | 38.1 |
| 26 | Cornell | 14 | 46 | 14 | 12 | 21 | 22 | 56 | 55 | 45 | 14 | 50 | 34 | 120 | 38.7 |
| 27 | Temple | 44 | 57 | 61 | 45 | 53 | 56 | 89 | 23 | 36 | 18 | 15 | 28 | 1 | 40.5 |
| 28 | Minnesota | 23 | 57 | 26 | 16 | 21 | 84 | 26 | 23 | 55 | 21 | 62 | 24 | 89 | 40.5 |
| 29 | William & Mary | 27 | 73 | 19 | 23 | 18 | 38 | 56 | 75 | 45 | 32 | 31 | 67 | 38 | 41.7 |
| 30 | Emory | 23 | 104 | 26 | 23 | 39 | 70 | 63 | 23 | 45 | 32 | 39 | 39 | 31 | 42.8 |
| 31 | Boston College | 27 | 26 | 33 | 27 | 46 | 56 | 34 | 48 | 32 | 36 | 50 | 13 | 135 | 43.3 |
| 32 | Chicago | 7 | 46 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 70 | 63 | 44 | 36 | 14 | 178 | 6 | 89 | 43.5 |
| 33 | Denver | 69 | 8 | 61 | 64 | 46 | 22 | 21 | 85 | 66 | 47 | 6 | 62 | 10 | 43.6 |
| 34 | UC-Davis | 23 | 57 | 21 | 27 | 21 | 32 | 17 | 55 | 36 | 29 | 169 | 28 | 67 | 44.8 |
| 35 | Univ. of Washington | 44 | 35 | 61 | 41 | 32 | 47 | 31 | 40 | 28 | 39 | 50 | 34 | 106 | 45.2 |
| 36 | Wake Forest | 44 | 86 | 54 | 41 | 24 | 47 | 44 | 21 | 79 | 67 | 6 | 67 | 26 | 46.6 |
| 37 | Maryland | 56 | 8 | 40 | 59 | 39 | 12 | 13 | 6 | 87 | 67 | 115 | 76 | 31 | 46.8 |
| 38 | Houston | 44 | 92 | 71 | 59 | 66 | 47 | 21 | 7 | 6 | 57 | 62 | 49 | 31 | 47.1 |
| 39 | Indiana (Maurer) | 44 | 92 | 35 | 37 | 32 | 47 | 34 | 55 | 28 | 32 | 31 | 15 | 135 | 47.5 |
| 40 | Florida | 27 | 104 | 48 | 34 | 46 | 38 | 21 | 60 | 66 | 67 | 84 | 3 | 26 | 48.0 |
| 41 | Loyola-L.A. | 56 | 57 | 65 | 64 | 32 | 70 | 96 | 48 | 32 | 62 | 31 | 13 | 7 | 48.7 |
| 42 | Arizona | 44 | 64 | 40 | 53 | 53 | 77 | 31 | 40 | 66 | 42 | 13 | 70 | 52 | 49.6 |
| 43 | Brooklyn | 27 | 23 | 48 | 41 | 24 | 56 | 139 | 85 | 79 | 42 | 27 | 28 | 38 | 50.5 |
| 44 | Wisconsin | 41 | 46 | 35 | 23 | 32 | 56 | 44 | 48 | 72 | 36 | 104 | 55 | 89 | 52.4 |
| 45 | Washington & Lee | 32 | 46 | 48 | 37 | 39 | 43 | 89 | 48 | 72 | 36 | 84 | 45 | 67 | 52.8 |
| 46 | Georgia | 32 | 46 | 35 | 45 | 60 | 47 | 73 | 40 | 79 | 21 | 149 | 39 | 21 | 52.8 |
| 47 | USC | 18 | 92 | 26 | 23 | 46 | 32 | 38 | 55 | 45 | 42 | 149 | 20 | 120 | 54.3 |
| 48 | Tulane | 32 | 35 | 54 | 41 | 46 | 77 | 17 | 60 | 72 | 29 | 115 | 70 | 61 | 54.5 |
| 49 | Texas A&M | 69 | 23 | 84 | 59 | 111 | 4 | 38 | 75 | 6 | 57 | 50 | 70 | 67 | 54.8 |
| 50 | Notre Dame | 32 | 80 | 26 | 45 | 46 | 56 | 56 | 85 | 36 | 27 | 128 | 45 | 52 | 54.9 |
| 51 | Colorado | 44 | 80 | 40 | 53 | 32 | 84 | 12 | 65 | 45 | 62 | 62 | 62 | 89 | 56.2 |
| 51 | Loyola-Chicago | 78 | 86 | 65 | 84 | 72 | 38 | 73 | 3 | 36 | 57 | 62 | 55 | 21 | 56.2 |
| 53 | Rutgers | 69 | 8 | 54 | 84 | 39 | 84 | 80 | 48 | 79 | 62 | 13 | 67 | 49 | 56.6 |
| 54 | Miami | 56 | 26 | 54 | 53 | 53 | 84 | 44 | 75 | 66 | 29 | 104 | 34 | 61 | 56.8 |
| 55 | Cardozo | 56 | 35 | 40 | 53 | 28 | 4 | 144 | 108 | 8 | 47 | 115 | 55 | 79 | 59.4 |
| 56 | UNLV | 69 | 35 | 71 | 45 | 72 | 8 | 96 | 40 | 72 | 105 | 1 | 55 | 106 | 59.6 |
| 57 | Chicago-Kent | 69 | 121 | 65 | 64 | 72 | 56 | 80 | 60 | 12 | 67 | 39 | 85 | 7 | 61.3 |
| 58 | Iowa | 32 | 92 | 48 | 27 | 39 | 110 | 96 | 65 | 55 | 47 | 39 | 55 | 106 | 62.4 |
| 59 | San Diego | 44 | 121 | 30 | 45 | 60 | 96 | 44 | 65 | 19 | 47 | 169 | 24 | 52 | 62.8 |
| 60 | Alabama | 44 | 64 | 30 | 53 | 60 | 84 | 80 | 75 | 105 | 81 | 74 | 39 | 38 | 63.6 |
| 60 | Utah | 41 | 92 | 48 | 53 | 39 | 110 | 16 | 44 | 36 | 47 | 104 | 49 | 148 | 63.6 |
| 62 | Case Western | 63 | 64 | 65 | 70 | 80 | 56 | 44 | 13 | 36 | 21 | 84 | 113 | 120 | 63.8 |
| 63 | Florida State | 56 | 132 | 35 | 34 | 46 | 77 | 21 | 65 | 72 | 47 | 160 | 45 | 52 | 64.8 |
| 64 | Georgia State | 63 | 35 | 54 | 64 | 60 | 96 | 96 | 3 | 66 | 105 | 128 | 62 | 31 | 66.4 |
| 65 | Howard | 78 | 35 | 54 | 70 | 53 | 96 | 96 | 85 | 45 | 81 | 50 | 95 | 26 | 66.5 |
| 66 | Pepperdine Caruso | 67 | 46 | 54 | 70 | 96 | 1 | 109 | 102 | 94 | 39 | 128 | 28 | 31 | 66.5 |
| 67 | SMU | 44 | 64 | 73 | 70 | 53 | 47 | 113 | 55 | 55 | 57 | 128 | 49 | 67 | 67.3 |
| 68 | Northeastern | 93 | 20 | 73 | 97 | 60 | 110 | 96 | 7 | 45 | 67 | 27 | 76 | 106 | 67.5 |
| 69 | BYU | 22 | 121 | 48 | 37 | 80 | 43 | 56 | 108 | 55 | 47 | 128 | 39 | 120 | 69.5 |
| 70 | Suffolk | 103 | 15 | 137 | 97 | 80 | 22 | 96 | 60 | 28 | 128 | 4 | 119 | 21 | 70.0 |
| 71 | Seattle | 93 | 26 | 93 | 84 | 72 | 22 | 80 | 108 | 72 | 81 | 6 | 85 | 89 | 70.1 |
| 72 | Illinois | 32 | 121 | 35 | 20 | 39 | 84 | 73 | 75 | 55 | 67 | 128 | 49 | 135 | 70.2 |
| 73 | Lewis & Clark | 83 | 73 | 93 | 84 | 90 | 38 | 4 | 102 | 63 | 67 | 27 | 95 | 106 | 71.2 |
| 74 | Villanova | 78 | 46 | 73 | 70 | 72 | 110 | 96 | 108 | 63 | 81 | 27 | 39 | 79 | 72.5 |
| 75 | Seton Hall | 78 | 73 | 65 | 84 | 66 | 110 | 80 | 13 | 94 | 97 | 84 | 62 | 52 | 73.7 |
| 76 | Richmond | 63 | 132 | 40 | 59 | 60 | 70 | 63 | 96 | 36 | 91 | 84 | 62 | 106 | 74.0 |
| 77 | Oregon | 69 | 121 | 84 | 59 | 80 | 9 | 7 | 185 | 87 | 91 | 1 | 55 | 135 | 75.6 |
| 78 | South Carolina | 69 | 35 | 104 | 80 | 53 | 110 | 68 | 65 | 115 | 101 | 115 | 49 | 38 | 77.1 |
| 79 | Pittsburgh | 78 | 92 | 65 | 80 | 80 | 110 | 109 | 38 | 45 | 42 | 128 | 28 | 120 | 78.1 |
| 80 | Michigan State | 67 | 104 | 73 | 70 | 72 | 84 | 96 | 102 | 55 | 62 | 84 | 102 | 49 | 78.5 |
| 81 | Santa Clara | 69 | 113 | 93 | 92 | 90 | 77 | 80 | 96 | 4 | 42 | 74 | 76 | 120 | 78.9 |
| 82 | St. John's | 63 | 86 | 73 | 70 | 66 | 32 | 153 | 124 | 87 | 81 | 39 | 124 | 38 | 79.7 |
| 83 | Hofstra | 83 | 73 | 93 | 97 | 66 | 96 | 139 | 75 | 79 | 81 | 50 | 85 | 21 | 79.8 |
| 84 | Stetson | 109 | 73 | 104 | 97 | 111 | 22 | 80 | 108 | 141 | 101 | 3 | 95 | 3 | 80.5 |
| 85 | Drexel | 83 | 64 | 84 | 97 | 96 | 110 | 144 | 33 | 94 | 118 | 21 | 119 | 10 | 82.5 |
| 86 | George Mason | 41 | 148 | 40 | 37 | 80 | 103 | 122 | 108 | 19 | 67 | 169 | 70 | 89 | 84.1 |
| 87 | Syracuse | 90 | 113 | 104 | 105 | 80 | 110 | 73 | 85 | 87 | 81 | 50 | 102 | 14 | 84.2 |
| 88 | Tennessee | 39 | 20 | 84 | 45 | 96 | 110 | 109 | 102 | 141 | 118 | 74 | 82 | 79 | 84.5 |
| 89 | Connecticut | 69 | 113 | 61 | 64 | 80 | 96 | 96 | 65 | 100 | 57 | 84 | 70 | 148 | 84.8 |
| 90 | Baltimore | 119 | 8 | 104 | 143 | 66 | 70 | 68 | 85 | 94 | 91 | 39 | 102 | 120 | 85.3 |
| 91 | DePaul | 103 | 92 | 84 | 113 | 96 | 110 | 139 | 29 | 25 | 81 | 74 | 85 | 89 | 86.2 |
| 91 | St. Louis | 93 | 57 | 73 | 84 | 96 | 110 | 134 | 1 | 87 | 91 | 104 | 70 | 120 | 86.2 |
| 91 | Wayne State | 119 | 35 | 73 | 97 | 72 | 110 | 80 | 60 | 105 | 67 | 128 | 85 | 89 | 86.2 |
| 94 | John Marshall (IL) | 119 | 80 | 121 | 125 | 96 | 110 | 122 | 75 | 32 | 97 | 15 | 132 | 21 | 88.1 |
| 95 | Kansas | 83 | 132 | 73 | 70 | 96 | 47 | 63 | 108 | 105 | 81 | 84 | 85 | 120 | 88.2 |
| 96 | Penn State-Dickinson | 90 | 73 | 93 | 92 | 96 | 110 | 89 | 65 | 105 | 67 | 84 | 95 | 106 | 89.6 |
| 97 | New Mexico | 119 | 8 | 104 | 80 | 90 | 110 | 29 | 85 | 121 | 128 | 74 | 113 | 106 | 89.8 |
| 98 | Indiana (McKinney) | 93 | 138 | 84 | 84 | 119 | 110 | 96 | 17 | 100 | 67 | 15 | 82 | 170 | 90.4 |
| 98 | Pace | 109 | 132 | 137 | 113 | 111 | 32 | 1 | 102 | 141 | 67 | 128 | 76 | 26 | 90.4 |
| 100 | Penn State-University Park | 93 | 64 | 73 | 105 | 111 | 56 | 44 | 85 | 121 | 67 | 115 | 85 | 161 | 90.8 |
If anyone at a law school outside the Top 100 would like the data for their school's rank, email me.
April 14, 2022 in Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
ProPublica Names The 15 Americans Who Reported The Most Income And Reveals Data For The Top 400
ProPublica, America's Highest Earners and Their Taxes Revealed:
Secret IRS files reveal the top US income-earners and how their tax rates vary more than their incomes. Tech titans, hedge fund managers and heirs dominate the list, while the likes of Taylor Swift and LeBron James didn’t even make the top 400.
ProPublica, America’s Top 15 Earners and What They Reveal About the U.S. Tax System:
An unprecedented trove of leaked IRS data shows who reported the most income in America from 2013 to 2018, as well as their tax rates, revealing that the very richest pay lower rates than the merely rich.
Whistleblower Claims Rutgers Created Fake Jobs For Graduates To Goose Business School Ranking
Following up on yesterday's post, Do The ‘U.S. News’ Rankings Rely On Dubious Data?: Chronicle of Higher Education, Rutgers B-School Faked Jobs for Graduates to Inflate Its Rankings, Lawsuit Says:
Rutgers University’s Business School inflated its rankings by creating fake jobs for its graduates, according to an accusation leveled in a whistle-blower lawsuit filed on Friday.
Deidre White, the business school’s human-resources manager, claims in her lawsuit that the university created bogus jobs to show that the school’s graduates had no trouble finding employment. But after she exposed the purported scheme and refused to comply with it, White asserts, she faced illegal harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.
The lawsuit charges that administrators at the business school used a temp agency called Adecco Employment Services Inc. to hire graduating M.B.A. students who had yet to land a job and place them in fictitious positions at the university. This created a false impression that “postgraduation employment is virtually guaranteed,” the lawsuit says.
April 14, 2022 in Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Good Intentions: Administrative Fiat And The General Welfare Exclusion
Samuel D. Brunson (Loyola-Chicago; Google Scholar) & Christian A. Johnson (Widener), Good Intentions: Administrative Fiat and the General Welfare Exclusion, 99 Wash. U. L. Rev. __ (2022):
Since its introduction in 1913, the federal income tax has viewed income expansively, subjecting virtually all types of enrichment as gross income unless Congress explicitly exempted the income from taxation. But in the income tax’s second decade, the Bureau of Internal Revenue created an exception to the broad reach, an exception not grounded in any type of Congressional enactment. The Bureau’s practice of excluding certain benefits began innocuously in the late 1930s by excluding certain social security benefits from gross income. Over the decades, the IRS has used what it now refers to as the “general welfare exclusion” to exclude from gross income everything from subsistence benefits to payments made to preserve historic buildings. Confronted with difficult questions surrounding poverty and ability to pay, the general welfare exclusion has provided a way for the IRS to resolve complex and unanticipated questions about whether certain government welfare benefits constitute gross income.
The general welfare exclusion, however, relies upon an enigmatic foundation of administrative rulings and decisions completely unhooked from any statutory authority or direction. While this administratively-created general welfare exclusion is broad and affects tens of millions of taxpayers, it nonetheless has been largely overlooked by taxpayers, tax scholars, and even legislators.
April 13, 2022 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship | Permalink
Colin Diver: The Rankings Farce
Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed: The Rankings Farce, by Colin Diver:
‘U.S. News’ and its ilk embrace faux-precise formulas riven with statistical misconceptions. ...
On July 1, 2002, I became president of Reed College in Portland, Ore. As I began to fill the shelves in my office with mementos from my previous life as a law-school dean, I could feel the weight already lifting from my shoulders. “I’m no longer subject to the tyranny of college rankings,” I thought. “I don’t need to worry about some news magazine telling me what to do.”
Seven years before my arrival at Reed, my predecessor, Steven S. Koblik, decreed that Reed would no longer cooperate with the annual U.S. News Best Colleges rankings. ...
There is a growing cottage industry of college evaluators, many spurred by the commercial success of U.S. News. I call it the “rankocracy” — a group of self-appointed, mostly profit-seeking journalists who claim for themselves the role of arbiters of educational excellence in our society. It wasn’t just the U.S. News rankings that were incompatible with Reed’s values. Virtually the whole enterprise of listing institutions in an ordinal hierarchy of quality involves faux precision, dubious methodologies, and blaring best-college headlines. To make matters worse, the entire structure rests on mostly unaudited, self-reported information of dubious reliability. In recent months, for example, the data supporting Columbia’s second place U.S. News ranking have been questioned, the University of Southern California’s School of Education has discovered a “history of inaccuracies” in its rankings data, and Bloomberg’s business-school rankings have been examined for perceived anomalies. ...
I came by my rankings aversion honestly. In 1989, I became the dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s law school. The next year, U.S. News began to publish annual rankings of law schools. Over the next nine years of my deanship, its numerical pronouncements hovered over my head like a black cloud. During those years, for reasons that remained a complete mystery to me, Penn Law’s national position would oscillate somewhere between seventh and 12th. Each upward movement would be a cause for momentary exultation; each downward movement, a cause for distress.
April 13, 2022 in Book Club, Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
Haneman: Dynasty 529 Plans And Structural Inequality
Victoria J. Haneman (Creighton; Google Scholar), Dynasty 529 Plans and Structural Inequality, 62 Washburn L.J. ___ (2022):
The tax advantages available through 529 accounts, such as the potential for perpetual tax-free growth, have been maximized by the wealth defense industry that operates to the advantage of high income and wealth families in the United States. This essay is more a thought piece than a polemic, with the goal of starting a conversation on an important issue not often discussed: a 2018 change to the 529 structure slipped into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has essentially turned 529 plans into a government-subsidized school voucher scheme for the wealthy. Through this change, the dynasty education trust has become an even more attractive umbrella under which multiple 529 accounts may be managed by an affluent family to pay not just for college but also all private school (K-12) on a tax-sheltered basis.
April 13, 2022 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship | Permalink
2023 U.S. News Trial Advocacy Rankings
The new 2023 U.S. News Trial Advocacy Rankings include the trial advocacy programs at 187 law schools (the faculty survey had a 54% response rate). Here are the Top 50:
| Rank | Score | School |
| 1 | 4.1 | Temple |
| 2 | 3.9 | Baylor |
| 3 | 3.8 | American |
| 3 | 3.8 | South Texas |
| 3 | 3.8 | Stetson |
| 6 | 3.7 | UCLA |
| 7 | 3.6 | Chicago-Kent |
| 7 | 3.6 | Fordham |
| 7 | 3.6 | Loyola-L.A. |
| 10 | 3.4 | Denver |
| 10 | 3.4 | Drexel |
| 10 | 3.4 | Samford |
| 10 | 3.4 | UC-Berkeley |
| 14 | 3.3 | St. Mary's |
| 14 | 3.3 | Syracuse |
| 16 | 3.2 | Campbell |
| 16 | 3.2 | Georgetown |
| 16 | 3.2 | Northwestern |
| 16 | 3.2 | Pacific |
| 20 | 3.0 | Washington Univ. |
| 21 | 2.9 | Georgia |
| 21 | 2.9 | Hofstra |
| 21 | 2.9 | John Marshall (IL) |
| 21 | 2.9 | Loyola-Chicago |
| 21 | 2.9 | Suffolk |
| 26 | 2.8 | Florida |
| 26 | 2.8 | Howard |
| 26 | 2.8 | Pace |
| 26 | 2.8 | UC-Hastings |
| 26 | 2.8 | Wake Forest |
| 31 | 2.7 | Emory |
| 31 | 2.7 | George Washington |
| 31 | 2.7 | Georgia State |
| 31 | 2.7 | Houston |
| 31 | 2.7 | Maryland |
| 31 | 2.7 | Missouri-Kansas City |
| 31 | 2.7 | Pepperdine Caruso |
| 38 | 2.6 | Akron |
| 38 | 2.6 | Alabama |
| 38 | 2.6 | Brooklyn |
| 38 | 2.6 | Harvard |
| 38 | 2.6 | Nova SE |
| 38 | 2.6 | NYU |
| 38 | 2.6 | Ohio Northern |
| 38 | 2.6 | South Carolina |
| 38 | 2.6 | St. John's |
| 38 | 2.6 | Texas |
| 38 | 2.6 | William & Mary |
| 49 | 2.5 | Catholic |
| 49 | 2.5 | Michigan State |
| 49 | 2.5 | Rutgers |
2022 U.S. News Trial Advocacy Rankings
2023 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:
April 13, 2022 in Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
U.S. Tax Court's Tax Trailblazers: Ron Sweeney
U.S. Tax Court's Diversity & Inclusion Series, Tax Trailblazers: Mentoring the Next Generation:
Please join the United States Tax Court as its Tax Trailblazers series continues with entertainment attorney, manager, consultant, and former record executive Ron Sweeney today at 7:00-8:15 PM EST (register here).
Ron Sweeney is a prominent entertainment attorney, manager, consultant, and former record executive who has managed major artists and practiced law for over forty years.
Mr. Sweeney grew up in South Central Los Angeles and attended George Washington High where he excelled as a jazz/rock/R&B drummer. He went to college at the University of California at Los Angeles and, while there, worked for the Internal Revenue Service as a tax auditor of high-net-worth individuals. Mr. Sweeney earned his JD from the University of Southern California, and is licensed to practice law in California.
He has done major deals for everybody from Clarence Avant, James Brown, Eazy-E, DMX, Sean "Puffy” Combs, to Lil Wayne and Young Money. He created Avant Garde Management and began representing the all-girl band “Klymaxx.” He also managed Morris Day and the Time, co-managed the pop band “Color Me Badd,” and others. In the early nineties he represented Eazy-E and Ruthless Records.
April 13, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education, Tax, Tax News | Permalink
Do The ‘U.S. News’ Rankings Rely On Dubious Data?
Chronicle of Higher Education, Do the ‘U.S. News’ Rankings Rely on Dubious Data?:
Researchers who submit to the publication say survey answers are subject to errors, ambiguity, and pressure to look good. ...
[There is a] complicated relationship between colleges’ data submitters and U.S. News, the best-known college-ranking system in the United States. Many resent the time and oxygen the ranking takes up. After The Chronicle asked to interview her, Christine M. Keller, executive director of the Association for Institutional Research, conducted an informal poll of the group’s members about their views of U.S. News. One major theme: Answering the magazine’s survey requires too many resources, a situation they see as taking away from internal data projects that contribute more to student success than rankings do. Yet they know that responding to the survey is an important part of their jobs, and often campus leaders are paying close attention.
Recently that relationship has undergone renewed scrutiny, as rankings-data controversies have piled up. First, a former dean of Temple University’s business school was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison for leading an effort to inflate statistics his school had sent to U.S. News. Then a Columbia University mathematics professor publicized his belief that his institution is sending inaccurate data to Morse and his colleagues, a contention Columbia has denied. Finally, the University of Southern California pulled out of the rankings for its graduate program in education because it discovered it had submitted wrong data for at least five years.
April 13, 2022 in Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Rosenzweig: International Tax Scholarship During An Existential Crisis
Adam Rosenzweig (Washington Univ.), Carving a Path for Legal Scholarship During an Existential Crisis (JOTWELL) (reviewing Wei Cui (British Columbia; Google Scholar), New Puzzles in International Tax Agreements, 73 Tax L. Rev. ___ (2022)):
The G-7 and G-20 recently announced a “breakthrough” agreement by over 130 countries to adopt and implement a “global minimum tax” proposal. The agreement is reportedly expected to raise over $150 billion in new revenue by closing some of the most notorious tax loopholes in the world; ultimately the deal could reshape global commerce and shore-up beleaguered national finances following the global pandemic. Officials involved in the deal have been quoted as making sweeping statements that the deal was historic, and that it would reshape the global economy, make worldwide taxation fairer, eliminate incentives for corporations to avoid tax, and serve as a clear signal for global justice.
A consistent theme can be seen to emerge from this process — that the cause for most of the problems plaguing the international tax regime ultimately stem from a lack of political will, with global corporate interests exploiting the vacuum of an uncoordinated tax system. Regardless if it is true, such a theme carries with it two collateral implications: (1) there is no disagreement as to the substance of the deal from a legal or policy standpoint and (2) any questioning of (1) must be motivated by the same political forces preventing reform in the past. Wei Cui’s article New Puzzles in International Tax Agreements analyzes and criticizes this theme.
This theme creates a form of existential moment for international tax law scholars – precisely because a once-in-a-generation global overhaul of the regime appears within reach. Yet, as intellectual debates transition into real-world policy-making, even facially neutral contributions risk getting lost in the noise of the moment, or maybe even worse stuck in a form of intellectual purgatory.
This is where Cui’s article intervenes, and does so with refreshing clarity and candor.
April 12, 2022 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship | Permalink
Are Law Schools Now Woke Factories?
Richard Reinsch (Heritage Foundation), Are Law Schools Now Woke Factories?:
Students at three recent college events threatened violence against conservative speakers, along with the student groups that invited them to speak on campus.
This may be commonplace today, but what makes this hostility so much more shocking is that it occurred at colleges once considered eminent law schools: Georgetown University Law Center, Hastings College of Law at the University of California, and Yale Law School.
These future lawyers and their professors have shown us precisely what they think of free speech and open inquiry when the wrong people with the wrong views come to campus. ...
April 12, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
NY Times: Holders Of Vanguard Target Funds File Class Action Over Massive Capital Gain Tax Bills
Following up on my previous post, Wall Street Journal: The Huge Tax Bills That Came Out Of Nowhere At Vanguard: New York Times, For Taxes, Where You Hold Your Investments Really Matters:
Tax bills are bad enough when you know they are coming. When they are unexpected and large, and come from what seemed like a safe and reliable place, they are infuriating.
That’s a rough summary of the effect of the big bills that some investors face because they hold retirement funds run by Vanguard and a handful of other fund companies in taxable accounts.
This tax problem hasn’t arisen for people who hold these so-called target date funds in tax-sheltered accounts — workplace retirement accounts like 401(k)s, or I.R.A.s. But for investors holding target date funds in ordinary, taxable accounts, it’s a different story. ...
2023 U.S. News Legal Writing Rankings
The new 2023 U.S. News Legal Writing Rankings include the legal writing programs at 186 law schools (the faculty survey had a 64% response rate). Here are the Top 50:
| Rank | Score | School |
| 1 | 4.3 | Oregon |
| 1 | 4.3 | UNLV |
| 3 | 4.2 | Stetson |
| 4 | 4.1 | Arizona State |
| 4 | 4.1 | Suffolk |
| 6 | 3.9 | Denver |
| 6 | 3.9 | Georgetown |
| 6 | 3.9 | Seattle |
| 6 | 3.9 | Wake Forest |
| 10 | 3.8 | Michigan |
| 10 | 3.8 | North Carolina |
| 10 | 3.8 | UC-Irvine |
| 13 | 3.7 | Arizona |
| 13 | 3.7 | Rutgers |
| 15 | 3.6 | Indiana (McKinney) |
| 15 | 3.6 | John Marshall (IL) |
| 15 | 3.6 | Mercer |
| 15 | 3.6 | Nova SE |
| 15 | 3.6 | Temple |
| 15 | 3.6 | Washburn |
| 21 | 3.5 | Drake |
| 21 | 3.5 | Drexel |
| 21 | 3.5 | Marquette |
| 21 | 3.5 | Missouri-Kansas City |
| 21 | 3.5 | Ohio State |
| 21 | 3.5 | Texas Tech |
| 27 | 3.4 | Brooklyn |
| 27 | 3.4 | Lewis & Clark |
| 27 | 3.4 | Northeastern |
| 27 | 3.4 | Villanova |
| 31 | 3.3 | Arkansas-Little Rock |
| 31 | 3.3 | Elon |
| 31 | 3.3 | Indiana (Maurer) |
| 31 | 3.3 | Loyola-L.A. |
| 31 | 3.3 | Northwestern |
| 31 | 3.3 | Pacific |
| 31 | 3.3 | South Texas |
| 31 | 3.3 | William & Mary |
| 39 | 3.2 | Arkansas-Fayetteville |
| 39 | 3.2 | Baltimore |
| 39 | 3.2 | Chicago-Kent |
| 39 | 3.2 | Duke |
| 39 | 3.2 | Duquesne |
| 39 | 3.2 | Emory |
| 39 | 3.2 | George Washington |
| 39 | 3.2 | Iowa |
| 39 | 3.2 | Loyola-New Orleans |
| 39 | 3.2 | Mitchell | Hamline |
| 39 | 3.2 | St. John's |
| 50 | 3.1 | Boston College |
| 50 | 3.1 | Cornell |
| 50 | 3.1 | Florida Int'l |
| 50 | 3.1 | Hofstra |
| 50 | 3.1 | Howard |
| 50 | 3.1 | Louisville |
| 50 | 3.1 | Syracuse |
| 50 | 3.1 | Texas A&M |
| 50 | 3.1 | Univ. of Washington |
| 50 | 3.1 | Virginia |
| 50 | 3.1 | Widener (DE) |
| 50 | 3.1 | Wyoming |
2022 U.S. News Legal Writing Rankings
2023 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:
April 12, 2022 in Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
Rosenbloom: The Branch Rule Of Subpart F
H. David Rosenbloom (Caplin & Drysdale; NYU), The Branch Rule: An Unhurried Read of the Statute, 175 Tax Notes Fed. 87 (Apr. 4, 2022):
In this article, Rosenbloom considers the language of the branch rule of subpart F and whether it should apply to both sales and manufacturing branches.
No one is likely to nominate the IRS for a writing award, but some of the Internal Revenue Code’s provisions are especially perplexing. One such provision is the branch rule of subpart F, found in section 954(d)(2):
April 12, 2022 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Analysts, Tax Scholarship | Permalink
Mean February 2022 MBE Score Falls, Tying Record Low
NCBE, National Mean of 132.6 for February 2022 MBE:
The national Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) mean scaled score for February 2022 was 132.6, a return to the February 2020 mean after an increase to a mean of 134.0 last February. This February’s MBE was administered exclusively via paper-based, in-person testing after three administrations (July/September/October 2020, February 2021, and July 2021) in which the MBE was administered both in person and remotely.
Derek Muller (Iowa), February 2022 MBE Bar Scores Fall, Match Record Lows:
We would expect bar exam passing rates to drop in most jurisdictions. ...
April 12, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
Monday, April 11, 2022
Tax Presentations At The Critical Trusts & Estates Conference
Tax presentations at the Critical Trusts and Estates Conference at Oklahoma City University School of Law last Thursday and Friday:
Death and Taxes
- Bridget Crawford (Pace; Google Scholar) & Lee-ford Tritt (Florida), The Appalachia Tax
- Victoria Haneman (Creighton; Google Scholar), Tax-Sheltering Funeral Savings
- Kayla Stephen (Kirschbaum Law Group), Pay to Stay Incarceration and Probate
- Phyllis Taite (Oklahoma City), Do Taxing Systems Impact Income and Wealth Inequality? Investigating Disparities in OECD Member and Contributing Countries
Debate — Resolved: Wealth Should Escheat to the State at Death Because it was Never Yours Anyway
April 11, 2022 in Conferences, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship | Permalink
Over 1,400 Political, Legal, And Academic Leaders Urge Yale Law School To Protect Free Speech
Philadelphia Statement on Civil Discourse and the Strengthening of Liberal Democracy (Letter to Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken) (Apr. 7, 2022):
What happened at Yale Law School on March 10, 2022 was disgraceful. But it creates an opportunity for you to send a clear message to the country about the importance of free speech and civil discourse. We ask that you take the following actions:
- Commit to your own students and others that Yale Law School administrators will use their best efforts to protect and cultivate a culture of free speech on campus.
- Commit to ensuring that speakers with diverse views are welcome at Yale.
- Condemn the behavior of students who violated other people’s rights on March 10 and take appropriate disciplinary actions in keeping with Yale’s free speech policies.
- Retract and/or issue corrections to Yale Law School’s initial statement concerning the events of March 10.
David Lat, Prominent Politicians Condemn The 'Vitriolic Mob' At Yale Law School:
I read the letter. I found myself in general agreement with its analysis. I concurred in the requests to Dean Gerken at the end, including the call for her to discipline the protesters—not surprising, since I called last month for such action in my own open letter to Dean Gerken.
April 11, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
Legal Ed News Roundup
Above the Law, Law School Rankings And The Grain Of Salt You Need
- Above the Law, You Know What’s Better Than Being A Lawyer? Starring In Bridgerton
- Gonzaga Bulletin, Gonzaga Law School Announces an End to Conditional Scholarships
- David Lat, The New U.S. News Law School Rankings
- Law.com, ABA Implements New Policy Aimed at Improving Diversity on CLE Panels, Effective Immediately
- Law.com, Analyzing Employment Outcomes for JDs
- Law.com, Hoping to Avoid Discovery in Law Students' Retaliation Suit, Yale Targets Plaintiffs Counsel's Past Sanctions for 'Egregious' Conduct
- Law.com, LSAT Sees Lowest Number of Test-Takers in a Decade, But the Dip Is Likely Temporary
April 11, 2022 in Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink
2023 U.S. News International Law Rankings
The new 2023 U.S. News International Law Rankings include the international law programs at 185 law schools (the faculty survey had a 52% response rate). Here are the Top 50:
| Rank | Score | School |
| 1 | 4.7 | NYU |
| 2 | 4.5 | Harvard |
| 3 | 4.4 | Columbia |
| 4 | 4.3 | Georgetown |
| 4 | 4.3 | Yale |
| 6 | 4.1 | Virginia |
| 7 | 4.0 | American |
| 7 | 4.0 | Michigan |
| 7 | 4.0 | UC-Berkeley |
| 10 | 3.9 | George Washington |
| 10 | 3.9 | Stanford |
| 12 | 3.8 | Duke |
| 12 | 3.8 | UCLA |
| 14 | 3.7 | Chicago |
| 14 | 3.7 | Cornell |
| 14 | 3.7 | Penn |
| 17 | 3.6 | Vanderbilt |
| 18 | 3.5 | Northwestern |
| 18 | 3.5 | Temple |
| 18 | 3.5 | UC-Irvine |
| 21 | 3.4 | Case Western |
| 21 | 3.4 | Fordham |
| 21 | 3.4 | Georgia |
| 21 | 3.4 | Minnesota |
| 21 | 3.4 | Texas |
| 21 | 3.4 | Washington Univ. |
| 27 | 3.3 | Notre Dame |
| 27 | 3.3 | UC-Hastings |
| 29 | 3.2 | Miami |
| 29 | 3.2 | Tulane |
| 29 | 3.2 | UC-Davis |
| 32 | 3.1 | Arizona State |
| 32 | 3.1 | Emory |
| 32 | 3.1 | Indiana (Maurer) |
| 32 | 3.1 | William & Mary |
| 36 | 3.0 | Boston College |
| 36 | 3.0 | Washington & Lee |
| 36 | 3.0 | Wisconsin |
| 39 | 2.9 | Boston Univ. |
| 39 | 2.9 | Pepperdine Caruso |
| 39 | 2.9 | Univ. of Washington |
| 42 | 2.8 | Arizona |
| 42 | 2.8 | Brooklyn |
| 42 | 2.8 | Pittsburgh |
| 42 | 2.8 | Santa Clara |
| 42 | 2.8 | USC |
| 47 | 2.7 | BYU |
| 47 | 2.7 | Cardozo |
| 47 | 2.7 | Denver |
| 47 | 2.7 | Florida Int'l |
| 47 | 2.7 | Florida State |
| 47 | 2.7 | Iowa |
| 47 | 2.7 | Ohio State |
| 47 | 2.7 | Pacific |
| 47 | 2.7 | San Diego |
| 47 | 2.7 | Utah |
2022 U.S. News International Law Rankings
2023 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:
April 11, 2022 in Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink
Lesson From The Tax Court: 50 Ways To Lose Your Interest Abatement Request
Obtaining an abatement of interest reminds me of Paul Simon’s song 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Sure, the “50 ways” in the song title is misleading. By my count, Simon gives us only four. And some are singularly unhelpful for real life advice. I mean, “make a new plan, Stan”? Really? But the hyperbole does it’s job: it draws attention to idea there are the multiple ways to break off a relationship.
My Lesson title is also hyperbolic, but serves the same purpose. When a taxpayer wants the IRS to abate interest charges, there are lots of ways to lose. Jeremy Edwin Porter v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2022-23 (March 28, 2022)(Judge Greaves) gives us a nice review of some of them. There, the hapless taxpayer was trying to get interest abated for, among other periods, a 34 month period where the Tax Court did not rule on pending discovery motions. The Court sustained the IRS rejection of the abatement request because, even if the delay was unreasonable, and even if it was not attributable to Mr. Porter, it was caused by the Tax Court, not the IRS. Ouch.
This gives us a good excuse to review the many ways the IRS can reject an interest abatement request. And perhaps learn how to be a diligent litigant so as to keep your client’s case moving along during Tax Court litigation. I hope today’s lesson is more helpful than Simon’s song. At least it won't be an earworm. Details below the fold.
April 11, 2022 in Bryan Camp, New Cases, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Practice And Procedure, Tax Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0)
ABA Tax Section Hosts Pathways To Careers In Tax Law Today
The ABA Tax Section hosts a new series on Pathways To Careers In Tax Law today at 12:00 PM EST (register here):
Please join us for the launch of a new Tax Section series: Pathways to Careers in Tax Law! Seasoned practitioners and active members of the Tax Section will provide a substantive overview of different areas of tax through unique presentations colored by engaging tales from their careers. You will not only gain an understanding of the area of tax law, but will be entertained, inspired and challenged to envision how your own career path can lead you to fulfilling work.
The launch of the Pathways series will also be the Tax Section’s first hybrid event at the new home of our upcoming Hybrid 2022 May Tax Meeting, the Marriott Marquis Washington, DC. You can choose to join in-person for the sessions, lunch and a networking reception, or tune in from your home or office. All attendance is free in exchange for your patience as we explore a new method of delivering content to an at-home and in-person audience simultaneously.
Agenda: These sessions will provide you with the tax law experience from both macro and micro perspectives.
April 11, 2022 in ABA Tax Section, Legal Education, Tax | Permalink
TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup
Saturday:
-
This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
- International And European Tax Moot Court Competition Results
- 2023 U.S. News Intellectual Property Law Rankings
- Tax Prof Sam Brunson Plays Taxman
Sunday:
- WSJ Op-Ed: There’s No Crisis Of Faith On Campus
- Selected Negative Teaching Evaluations Of Jesus Christ
- Harvard Journal Of Sports And Entertainment Law Honors The Memory Of Cedric Michael Weston Halloran (2000-2021)
- The Top Five New Tax Papers
April 11, 2022 in Legal Education, Tax | Permalink
Sunday, April 10, 2022
WSJ Op-Ed: There’s No Crisis Of Faith On Campus
Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: There’s No Crisis of Faith on Campus, by Ryan Burge (Baptist Pastor; Author, Twenty Myths About Religion and Politics in America (2022); and Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois University):
Many religious parents worry that higher education will weaken their children’s belief, but evidence shows the result is often just the opposite.
As a pastor who is also a professor of social science, I am often asked by parents of teenagers who were raised in a religious environment how their son or daughter can maintain their faith when they go off to some large state university or private liberal-arts college. Many parents seem to believe that as soon as their child walks into a freshman class, they will throw out their Bibles and pick up Nietzsche.
They haven’t plucked this idea out of thin air. It was the premise of the 2014 film God’s Not Dead, which became very popular in Christian circles and spawned two sequels. In the movie, an evangelical student enrolls in a philosophy class led by an atheist professor. To pass the course, every student has to sign a declaration that “God is dead.” The main character refuses, leading to a series of debates in the class about the existence of God. In the end, most of the class sides with the student, and the professor leaves in defeat.
With reinforcement such as this, the assumption that going to college undermines faith has put down deep roots in the psyche of many conservative Christians. ... But is it true that going to college makes students less religious? Are people with higher levels of education more likely to say that they have no religious affiliation than those who have completed only high school?
April 10, 2022 in Faith, Legal Education | Permalink
Selected Negative Teaching Evaluations Of Jesus Christ
McSweeney's, Selected Negative Teaching Evaluations of Jesus Christ:
“By week one, I was already tired of his anti-rich, pro-Samaritan bullshit. I wanted to take a course in Christianity, not liberalism.” ...
“Kind of absent-minded. My name’s Simon, and he’s called me ‘Peter’ for the entire semester.” ...
“Tells too many stories. Easy to get him off track during lectures.” ...
April 10, 2022 in Faith, Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink
Harvard Journal Of Sports And Entertainment Law Honors The Memory Of Cedric Weston Halloran (2000-2021)
During the pandemic, our law school community has endured far too many deaths, including the loss of recent graduates, alumni, faculty, faculty spouses, and children of faculty. Our beloved colleague Maureen Weston and her husband Brian Halloran are mourning the death last year of their 20-year old son, Cedric. To honor and continue Cedric's legacy, Maureen and Brian have established the Cedric Weston Halloran Project For Student Mental, Physical, and Fiscal Health and the Cedric Weston Halloran Endowed Scholarship. Maureen posted on Facebook this wonderful tribute from the co-editors-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law:
We mourned Cedric's passing at last year's Baccaureate Service, which was the first time our community gathered in person since we shifted online during the pandemic 440 days earlier. There are of course no words to adequately convey our sorrow and comfort Maureen, Brian, and all in our community who have suffered tragic losses during the pandemic. I said in part:
Although we have lost much over the past 440 days, we are here to worship the God who created us, the God who has been with us the past 440 days, and the God who will be with us for the next 10,000 years and forever more.
April 10, 2022 in Faith, Legal Education, Pepperdine Legal Ed | Permalink
The Top Five New Tax Papers
This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list. The #1 paper is #157 among 16,727 tax papers in all-time downloads:
- [752 Downloads] Amazon and the State Aid Tax Saga, by Leopoldo Parada (Leeds; Google Scholar)
- [356 Downloads] How Treasury and the IRS Have Allowed High-Net-Worth Taxpayers to Exploit Stepped-Up Basis on Intergenerational Wealth Transfers, and How They Can Stop It: Answers to Question for the Record, by Daniel Hemel (Chicago; Google Scholar)
- [280 Downloads] Concentrix: A Critical Review of the Delhi High Court's Ruling On the Interpretation of the India-Netherlands Tax Treaty, by Dhruv Janssen-Sanghavi (Maastricht)
- [260 Downloads] Revitalizing The Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax, by Daniel Hemel (Chicago; Google Scholar) & Robert Lord (Americans for Tax Fairness)
April 10, 2022 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Scholarship, Top 5 Downloads | Permalink
Saturday, April 9, 2022
This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
- Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Penalty Approval In Conservation Easement Cases
- U.S. News, 2023 Law School Peer Reputation Rankings (And Overall Rankings)
- Yale Daily News, Unlike Dean Gerken, Professor Stith Says Law Students' Disruption Of Speaker At FedSoc Event Violated Yale’s Free Expression Policy
- Harvard Crimson, Federal Judge Reinstates Harvard Law Students' COVID-19 Tuition Refund Class Action
- AALS, The American Law School Dean Study
- 2023 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:
- Constitutional Law
- Contracts/Commercial Law
- Criminal Law
- Dispute Resolution
- Environmental Law
- Health Care Law
- New York Times, UCLA Help Wanted: Adjunct Professor, Must Have Doctorate. Salary: $0
- Brian Galle (Georgetown), David Gamage (Indiana) & Darien Shanske (UC-Davis), Solving the Valuation Challenge: A Feasible Method for Taxing Extreme Wealth
- New York Times Op-Ed (Tish Harrison Warren), Three Habits My Family Started in the Pandemic That We Want to Keep
- Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup, Kim Reviews Sanchirico's A Game-theoretic Analysis of Global Minimum Tax Design
April 9, 2022 in About This Blog, Legal Education, Tax, Weekly Top 10 TaxProf Blog Posts | Permalink
International And European Tax Moot Court Competition Results
The International and European Tax Moot Court is sponsored by the Institute of Tax Law of KU Leuven and the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation. The competition attracts dozens of law student teams from schools around the world who sharpen their oral and written argument skills on tax issues with global implications. This year's results:
Winner: WU Vienna
Second Place: University of Virginia
Best Pleading team (overall): University of Virginia
Best Pleading team Applicant: University of Virginia
Best Pleading team Defendant: University of Virginia
Best Memorandum Applicant: University of Luxembourg
Best Memorandum Defendant: University of Virginia
Best Individual Applicant: Nathalie Mauch (University of Virginia) & Ahmad Mafaz Syrus (University of Luxembourg)
Best Individual Defendant: Antonio Person (Northwestern Pritzker School of Law)
April 9, 2022 in Legal Education, Tax | Permalink
