Doran Presents The Great American Retirement Fraud Today At Duke

Michael Doran (Virginia; Google Scholar) presents The Great American Retirement Fraud at Duke today as part of its Duke Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Lawrence Zelenak:

Over the past twenty-five years, Congress has enacted several major reforms for employer-sponsored retirement plans and individual retirement accounts (“IRAs”), always with large bipartisan, bicameral majorities. In each case, legislators have claimed that the reforms would improve retirement security for millions of Americans, especially rank-and-file workers. But the supposed interest in helping lower-income and middle-income earners has been a stalking horse for the real objective of expanding the tax subsidies available to higher-income earners. The legislation has repeatedly raised the statutory limits on contributions and benefits for retirement plans and IRAs, delayed the start of required distributions, and weakened statutory non-discrimination rules — all to the benefit of affluent workers and the financial-services companies that collect asset-based fees from retirement savings. The result has been spectacular growth in the retirement accounts of higher-income earners but modest or even negative growth in the accounts of middle-income and lower-income earners. 

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Symposium: The 21st Century Trust — Evolution, Innovation, Adaptation

Symposium, The 21st Century Trust: Evolution, Innovation, Adaptation, 53 Creighton L. Rev. 643-764 (2020):

• Thomas Simmons (South Dakota; Google Scholar), Christian Purpose Trusts, 53 Creighton L. Rev. 643 (2020)
• Julie Blaskewicz Boron (Nebraska), Cognitive Competence and Decision-Making Capacity, 53 Creighton L. Rev. 659 (2020)
• Steven Schwarcz (Duke; Google Scholar), Tepoel Lecture: Bond Trustees and the Rising Challenge of Activist Investors, 53 Creighton L. Rev. 669 (2020)
• Carla Spivack (Oklahoma City), Twenty-First Century Trusts and Ethics: Estate Planning for Couples, 53 Creighton L. Rev. 683 (2020)
• Elaine Hightower Gagliardi (Montana), Estate Planning Choice of Wealth Management Entity: The Limited Partnership as an Alternative to the Trust, 53 Creighton L. Rev. 695 (2020)

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Hamburger & Volokh Debate: Are Law School Deans, Faculty, And Students Who Stifle Opposing Views Unfit Ever To Be Judges?

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  Intolerant Lawyers Shouldn’t Be Judges, by Philip Hamburger (Columbia):

Law school deans, faculty and students who stifle opposing views are unfit ever to sit on the bench.

What should be done about law-school deans and others in legal institutions who censor, cancel, blacklist, refuse to hire, fire, “investigate” and otherwise threaten others for their opinions? A partial answer lies in reminding them that their misconduct may disqualify them from ever sitting on the bench. At one point or another, most lawyers dream about being a judge. Lawyers and aspiring lawyers should remember that their conduct today may be the measure of their disqualification tomorrow.

The question came up last week at Georgetown Law School, when the dean, William Treanor, put a newly hired administrator and senior lecturer, Ilya Shapiro, on leave pending an investigation—merely because of a tweet about the pending Supreme Court nomination. Leaving aside that nonacademic opinion is no reason for punishing an academic, Mr. Treanor’s reaction is one more case of harassing dissenters.

The problem is now pervasive in law schools. On account of mere dissent, deans investigate faculty for their views, give them meager salary increases, bar them from teaching some subjects, and even threaten to fire them—as at Georgetown. It’s not only deans. Faculties or their appointment committees regularly refuse to hire people with the wrong views. Just as bad, student law-review editors exclude dissenting students from their boards and even threaten to fire editors whom they discover to have the wrong views, whether on pronouns or matters of law. Student editors also refuse to publish perspectives they dislike—at some journals, they have blocked conservative perspectives, originalist arguments, and “anti-administrative” (aka constitutional) positions. ...

What’s to be done? In the legal world, the first step is to remember that people who are intolerant aren’t fit to serve as judges or in other positions of legal authority.

If a dean, committee member, law-review editor, bar-association leader, or other person in authority cancels, blacklists, excludes, threatens or otherwise disadvantages scholars, students, lawyers or their work on the basis of their opinions, can he be trusted as a judge to listen with an open mind to conflicting legal positions? If someone can’t tolerate both sides, how can he be trusted to do justice impartially?

Eugene Volokh (UCLA), It's Blacklisting All the Way Down:

I appreciate Prof. Hamburger's concern about the disease, but I'm not on board with the cure.

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Villanova Seeks To Hire Faculty Director Of Graduate Tax Program

Villanova seeks to hire a Professor of Practice and Faculty Director of its Graduate Tax Program:

Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law seeks a distinguished tax practitioner to lead its Graduate Tax Program beginning in May/June 2022. The interdisciplinary Graduate Tax Program has over 250 full and part-time students enrolled in both on-campus and online courses. It offers a Master of Laws in Taxation (LLM) for lawyers and a Master of Taxation (MT) for non-lawyers, as well as Certificate Programs in specialized areas of taxation. The Faculty Director is responsible for leading and managing the Graduate Tax Program’s academic programs, including faculty, curriculum, and teaching, and working with the Program’s Staff Director to accomplish operational objectives.

The ideal candidate would be an experienced tax practitioner with excellent leadership and management skills who has some teaching experience in academia (e.g., as an adjunct professor). However, prior academic experience is not a requirement.

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Subpoena For Trump Lawyer John Eastman's Documents On Chapman's Server Highlights Risk Of Faculty Use Of Law School Accounts For Personal Email

ABA Journal, Chapman University Says It Didn’t Authorize Law Prof’s Representation of Trump, Yet Work Was on Server:

Law professors often use school emails when representing clients, but they may want to rethink that, following a recent subpoena sent to Chapman University from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, seeking documents from former faculty member John Eastman.

The Jan. 20, 2022, subpoena relates to the constitutional law professor’s legal representation of former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election, and includes emails, contact lists and calendar entries on the university server.

Eastman retired in January 2021. On Jan. 25, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled against Eastman’s motion to quash the subpoena and enjoin the committee from enforcing it. Among his arguments, Eastman claimed the server documents included attorney work-product, which have a privacy expectation.

Eastman had no expectation of privacy on the university server, and a written school policy said as much, according to the government’s Jan. 21 motion opposing Eastman’s TRO request. ...

“I suspect most law professors assume their emails are private. This surprises me a bit because I often comment publicly that people too frequently are lulled into carelessness about what they say in emails and then are shocked that emails are discoverable—in situations ranging from divorces to congressional subpoenas,” Catherine Ross, a George Washington University Law School constitutional law professor, told the ABA Journal in an email. ...

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IRS Office of Chief Counsel Hosts Navigating Careers In IRS' Office Of Chief Counsel

IRS Office of Chief Counsel hosts Navigating Careers in IRS' Office of Chief Counsel today at 12:30 PM EST (register here). 

Have you ever wondered about working for the IRS, Office of Chief Counsel? Are you interested in tax or cutting edge issues? Do you like Litigation or Transactional Law? Have you considered a career with the federal government? IRS' Office of Chief Counsel might be the place for you! Come join us to learn about our programs, how to apply, and ask questions about the application process.

We are currently hiring LLM students, recent grads and experienced attorneys.  Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn about the Office of Chief Counsel and get some of your questions answered.

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Economics Is The Least Socioeconomically Diverse Of All Major PhD Fields

Robert A. Schultz (Michigan) & Anna Stansbury (MIT), Socioeconomic Diversity of Economics PhDs:

Amongst US-born PhDs, Economics is less socioeconomically diverse than *all* the major PhD fields, including math, computer science, physical and biological sciences, and other social sciences.

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Call For Papers: American College Of Trust And Estate Counsel

The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel has issued a Call For Papers:

With increasing public attention focused on protecting our privacy, the practice and study of trusts and estates has been profoundly affected by a series of issues concerning the safeguarding of private information. Estate planners and law school professors have become more likely to consider a multitude of issues relating to privacy rights.

A special issue of the ACTEC Law Journal will be devoted to a discussion of the intersection of Trusts and Estates and privacy issues and will be comprised of brief articles (3,000 word maximum). The conception of privacy issues is broad and intended to encompass all relevant matters of legal concern that a trusts and estates lawyer or professor might address. Suggested topics include silent trusts, taxation of privacy rights, corporate transparency and the impact on disclosure of ownership rights, identity confidentiality, incapacity planning to avoid a conservatorship, planning for public figures, and classic core trusts and estates topics like wills, trusts, intestacy, probate administration, and nonprobate transfers.

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Foley Delivers Pugh Lecture Today At San Diego On Mountains And Mentors: My Path To The Tax Court

Chief Judge Maurice B. Foley (San Diego) delivers the annual Richard Crawford Pugh Lecture on Tax Law & Policy at San Diego today on Mountains and Mentors: My Path to the Court:

Judge Foley became Chief Judge of the United States Tax Court on June 1, 2018 after being elected to a two-year term. He was initially appointed to the Tax Court as Judge by President Clinton on April 9, 1995 and served until April 8, 2010. He was reappointed to the court by President Obama on November 25, 2011, with a term end date of November 24, 2026. Prior to his judicial appointments, Judge Foley served as an attorney for the Legislation and Regulations Division of the Internal Revenue Service, Tax Counsel for the United States Senate Committee on Finance, and Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel in the U.S. Treasury's Office of Tax Policy.

In addition to teaching at USD School of Law, Judge Foley is an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the University of Colorado School of Law.

Judge Foley was the first African-American appointed to the United States Tax Court.

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Tahk: Spillover Tax Precedent

Susannah Camic Tahk (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), Spillover Tax Precedent, 2021 Wis. L. Rev. 657: 

We know that pro se litigants often lose. However, we know almost nothing about the circumstances in which they win. One such circumstance, this Article finds, is when they can take advantage of favorable precedent. This Article calls those favorable precedents for pro se litigants “spillover precedents.” Spillover precedents are cases with redistributive downward ripple effects that subsequently benefit pro se litigants. This Article is the first to examine the potential redistributive effects of precedent.

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Do Black Lawyers Matter To The Legal Profession?: Applying An Antiracism Paradigm To Eliminate Barriers To Licensure For Future Black Lawyers

DeShun Harris (Memphis), Do Black Lawyers Matter to the Legal Profession?: Applying an Antiracism Paradigm to Eliminate Barriers to Licensure for Future Black Lawyers, 31 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 59 (2020):

The legal profession has an anemic representation of Black lawyers. In 2020, the population of Black lawyers was 5% of the legal profession compared to White lawyers who made up 86% of the profession. Drastic action is needed to change this disparity. The time for changing that disparity has never been clearer than now. The Black Lives Matter movement took hold of the nation in 2020 after the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed. It now may be the largest movement in U.S. history. The movement has engaged the public by raising awareness about issues impacting Black Americans and by charging institutions with making change. Many have argued that the movement was aided by the disruption caused by COVID-19, which confined people to their homes giving them time to consider race issues and ways they could engage in changing those issues.5 Given the limited representation of Black lawyers in the profession, what can the legal profession do in this movement to eliminate barriers to licensure for future Black lawyers? 

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Solomon Delivers Tax Lecture Today At San Francisco On The Future Of Tax Policy

Eric Solomon (Steptoe & Johnson, Washington, D.C.) delivers the annual E.L. Wiegand Visiting Fellow Lecture virtually at San Francisco today on Forces at Play: The Future of Tax Policy at 3:00 PM ET/Noon PT (registration here):

Solomon will discuss recent trends in the legislative process and the forces that will affect this process into the future. The lecture will also discuss trends in the promulgation of regulations and other guidance, as well as challenges facing the IRS in administering the tax law.

Prior E.L. Wiegand Visiting Fellow Lectures:

• 2021:  Heather Field (UC-Hasting), How Good Tax Lawyers Go Wrong
• 2020:  Brant Hellwig (Washington & Lee), The Tax Plight of the High-Salary Employee after the 2017 Tax Legislation

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More Black Women Are Leading U.S. Law Schools And Changing The Conversation On Race And Gender

The 19th News, More Black Women Are Leading U.S. Law Schools and Changing the Conversation on Race and Gender:

A rising cohort of new leaders want to help their institutions better understand the country’s history and how it inextricably shapes the law today. ...

Last year, the number of Black women leading American law schools reached a high of 28. Two are interim deans. Twenty-one of them were appointed dean for the first time within the last four years. A number of them are also the first Black woman to hold their position.

These Black women deans are guiding their faculty and students through a time of contentious debates about academic teachings about systemic racism and inequities. For many of them, part of that leadership means helping their institutions better understand the country’s history and how it inextricably shapes the law today. The 19th spoke with 11 of those women about their rise to these roles, how they navigate today’s political divisions and the strong bonds they share with one another. ...

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Simkovic: Did New Deal Liberalism Steer Too Far To The Right?

Michael Simkovic (USC; Google Scholar), Did New Deal Liberalism Steer Too Far to the Right?, 174 Tax Notes Fed. 681 (Jan. 31, 2022) (reviewing A Half-Century With the Internal Revenue Code: The Memoirs of Stanley S. Surrey (Ajay K. Mehrotra (Northwestern; Google Scholar) & Lawrence Zelenak (Duke), eds. 2022):

Ajay K. Mehrotra, professor of law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and Lawrence Zelenak, the Pamela B. Gann Professor of Law at Duke Law School, have prepared a sparkling introduction to the recently discovered memoirs of Stanley S. Surrey, which they have also edited for publication.

Surrey was a tour de force in the legal academy and government. His career spanned the rise, peak, and fall of New Deal liberalism and the triumph of Reagan-Thatcherism that followed. Mehrotra and Zelenak deftly portray Surrey’s life against the backdrop of broader social forces and trends. Their sympathy for their subject shines through the essay, but it never veers into hagiography.

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AALS Call For Papers: Scholars At Risk

AALS, Journal Of Legal Education Call For Papers: Scholars At Risk:

The editors of the Journal of Legal Education welcome articles and reflections on threats to academic freedom, coercion of legal and other scholars, and the relationship between legal scholarship, education and democracy both in the United States and around the world.

In recent years, people in a number of countries have felt the silencing of their voices, endured a rise in authoritarianism, and witnessed an erosion of governmental accountability. While regime changes are highly publicized, they typically come hand in hand with less visible threats to freedom of expression and attacks on diverse voices in every corner of society. Intolerant discourse at top governmental levels also has pervasive effects in sowing communitarian discord and marginalizing certain groups, as we have seen, for instance, with the rise in hate crimes against Asians all over the world this past year. Academia has a particularly privileged position to speak for those who can’t, but universities and other institutions of learning can also be especially vulnerable to attacks as an obvious locus of dissent. Legal scholarship has long concerned itself with freedom of speech, and the topic remains of daily relevance.

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IRS Chief Counsel Honors Attorney Program (Class of 2022)

USA Jobs, Honors Attorney Program (Class of 2022):

Summary
Office of Chief Counsel, IRS, is looking for enthusiastic individuals to join our team and gain valuable experience in a legal environment. Our mission is to serve America's taxpayers fairly and with integrity by providing correct and impartial interpretation of the internal revenue laws and the highest quality legal advice and representation for the IRS. It is a great place to work with an excellent benefits package and family-friendly atmosphere.

Duties
The IRS Office of Chief Counsel's Honors Program is a highly competitive program available to primarily third-year law students, graduating Tax LL.M. students and judicial clerks. The program offers entry level positions that provide the opportunity to acquire significant training and experience in tax law. The positions are open to individuals each year who have superior academic qualifications or relevant experience to the work of the Office of Chief Counsel.

• Appointments will be made to a Law Clerk at the GS-12 (with LL.M.) for 14-months, pending bar association admission.
• Participants may be converted to an entry-level attorney position after admittance to a State Bar and demonstration of satisfactory employment during the interim period.
• If admitted to a State Bar before the Final Job Offer, appointments will be made to a General Attorney (Tax) GS-12/13/14.

As an attorney with the Office of Chief Counsel you will work for one of several major Counsel organizations, based on your particular interest, qualifications, and the staffing needs of the Office. Whether you are in a field office or National Office position, you will receive substantial training and responsibility. The following link describes our legal divisions Legal Divisions | IRS Careers

We are recruiting for both our National Office and our Field Office Divisions throughout the country.

National Office
We are recruiting for our National Office Divisions located in Washington, D.C.

Field Office Divisions
We are recruiting for various divisions in the following locations: Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Dallas, Denver, Chicago, Manhattan, Jacksonville, and Houston.

To qualify for this position of Law Clerk you must meet the qualification requirements listed below:

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Sterk: Incentivizing Fair Housing

Stewart E. Sterk (Cardozo), Incentivizing Fair Housing, 101 B.U. L. Rev. 1607 (2021):

Restrictive land use regulation has thwarted the upward mobility of many Americans, particularly Americans of color. Local restrictions imposed by affluent municipalities have limited access to safe neighborhoods, better housing, and good schools. Racism and economic self-interest have both played a role in exclusionary practices which have contributed to high housing costs that place a strain on the entire economy

Fair Housing Act litigation has been one weapon in the fight against these practices. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., disparate impact litigation faces significant obstacles that limit its value as a tool to fight exclusionary zoning. First, because restrictive zoning ordinances have such widespread economic effect, it will generally be difficult to prove that their impact on members of protected classes is disparate. Second, municipalities are likely to have successful defenses against disparate impact claims arising from restrictive zoning—including the “business necessity” defense that zoning restrictions are necessary to minimize the tax burden on local residents. Third, litigation sets up an adversarial dynamic that leads municipalities to resist housing initiatives rather than embracing them. 

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Pro Se Precedent In The U.S. Tax Court: A Case For Amicus Briefs

Caitlin Hird (Harvard) & Keith Fogg (Harvard), Pro Se Precedent in the U.S. Tax Court: A Case for Amicus Briefs: 

The United States Tax Court hears well over 90% of the federal tax cases litigated each year with only a small percentage of opinions coming out of district courts and the Court of Federal Claims. The Tax Court classifies its opinions as precedential or non-precedential based on the issues presented. Over 75% of Tax Court litigants file their petition pro se. Each year it classifies a handful of opinions as precedential in which the petitioner(s) is pro se. In almost all of these cases the Court creates binding precedent on the basis of a case in which only one side, the IRS, presents meaningful legal arguments thus turning the process leading to the decision from one based on the adversarial process to the inquisitorial process. While the Tax Court works hard to reach the right conclusion, it loses the benefit of legal argument on the side of the petitioner/taxpayer and potentially reaches a different conclusion than it might have reached had the taxpayer’s side of the argument been well developed.

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WSJ Op-Ed: Why Colleges (And Law Schools) Don’t Care About Free Speech—And How To Make Them Care

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  Why Colleges Don’t Care About Free Speech, by John Hasnas (Georgetown):

Georgetown University’s law school violated its own speech policy last week when it placed Ilya Shapiro, a newly hired administrator, on leave over a tweet that offended some students. Why do universities make grandiloquent commitments to freedom of speech, then fail to honor them? It isn’t so much an issue of ideology as a problem of incentives. ...

Mr. Shapiro tweeted that the candidate he viewed as “objectively” most qualified for the Supreme Court “alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.” The dean of Georgetown Law, William Treanor, announced that Mr. Shapiro’s comment was “at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law” and ordered “an investigation into whether he violated our policies and expectations on professional conduct, non-discrimination, and anti-harassment."

Regardless of Mr. Treanor’s political views, he has every reason to do this. University administrators get no reward for upholding abstract principles. Their incentive is to quell on-campus outrage and bad press as quickly as possible. Success is widely praised, but there is no punishment for failing to uphold the university’s commitment to free speech.

The solution is to create an incentive for schools to protect open inquiry—the fear of lawsuits.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Acing the Exam: Kellye Testy Made Sure the Pandemic Wouldn’t Disrupt Law School Admissions Process
• ABA Journal, In Federal Complaint, UIC Law Professor Claims 'Sensitivity Training' Violates His Civil Rights
• ABA Journal, Jurisdictions Hope Safety Plans Curb COVID-19 Fears For In-Person Bar Exam
• Above the Law, Bar Tabs: Legal Career Advice, Served Neat
• Above the Law, Biden Administration Fights To Keep Student Debt An Inescapable Nightmare
• Above the Law, Elite Law School Cancels In-Person Class Amid Mass Shooting Threat
• Above the Law, Harvard Law Review Elects Its First Latina President
• Above the Law, Law School Dean Has Some Advice For Stressed-Out Students: ‘It’s Not Going To Get Any Easier’
• Above the Law, The ‘Law Students Are Soft Because They Can’t Handle Casual Racism’ Takes Are Right On Cue
• Above the Law, Merger Talks Are Now Off The Table At These Two Law Schools
• Cleveland.com, Rename Cleveland-Marshall Law School for Black Civil Rights Leader John Malvin
• Law360, W.Va. Bill Could Make Marshall Law School A Reality
• Law.com, 'It Bugs Me to This Day': Attorneys and Judges Trade Law School 'Worst Grade' Stories, Secret Strategies

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ABA Legal Rebel: Kellye Testy

ABA Legal Rebels, Acing the Exam: Kellye Testy Made Sure the Pandemic Wouldn’t Disrupt Law School Admissions Process:

In February 2020, many people didn’t realize—or perhaps acknowledge—the world was entering a global pandemic. But Kellye Testy, president and CEO of the Law School Admission Council, did, and she was thinking the organization’s traditional in-person LSAT might not work out.

By March of that year, the organization announced that month’s LSAT was canceled. The April LSAT was canceled, too, but during the same month, news was released about an online LSAT scheduled for May. According to Testy, the announcement about the online test, known as the LSAT-Flex, was released before the product was made.

“It was the proverbial building the airplane while you’re flying it,” says Testy, who has been LSAC president and CEO since 2017. The first online test was on May 18, 2020, and its scores were released June 5, 2020.

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Blue J: Using Machine Learning To Crack The Tax Code

Benjamin Alarie (Osler Chair in Business Law, University of Toronto; CEO, Blue J Legal) & Xue Griffin (Senior Legal Research Associate, Blue J Legal), Using Machine Learning to Crack the Tax Code, 174 Tax Notes Fed. 661 (Jan. 31, 2022):

In this article, Alarie and Griffin review Blue J’s machine-learning predictions from the past year and reflect on the state of the technology of tax prediction.

Conclusion
Even though the strong forms of AI that approach human-level intelligence — AGI — are likely to be decades away, tax practitioners are increasingly able to leverage ML models that provide valuable insight into hidden patterns that will allow them to “crack the code.”

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London Study Abroad Opportunity For 2Ls And 3Ls In Fall 2022

One of the major components of our global programs at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law is our Fall London Program, now in its 41st year. I am pleased to announce that Professor Naomi Goodno will be serving as the program’s academic director in Fall 2022. She will lead the faculty of British professors and practitioners teaching a wide array of course. We invite and welcome visiting 2Ls and 3Ls who are interested in international and comparative law, human rights, conflict resolution, arbitration, business, and diplomacy. The program offers extensive externship opportunities in London, study tours to international courts and institutions, and energetic moot court competitions with British law students and young lawyers.

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IRS Abandons Plan To Require Taxpayers To Scan Their Face To See Their Tax Returns After Firestorm Of Criticism

Following up on last week's post, The IRS Wants To Scan Your Face:  IR-2022-27 (Feb. 7, 2022), IRS Announces Transition Away From Use of Third-Party Verification Involving Facial Recognition:  

The IRS announced it will transition away from using a third-party service for facial recognition to help authenticate people creating new online accounts. The transition will occur over the coming weeks in order to prevent larger disruptions to taxpayers during filing season.

During the transition, the IRS will quickly develop and bring online an additional authentication process that does not involve facial recognition. The IRS will also continue to work with its cross-government partners to develop authentication methods that protect taxpayer data and ensure broad access to online tools.

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Bruckner Presents Tax Research For Small Business/Self-Employed Taxpayers Today At Oregon

Caroline Bruckner (American; Google Scholar) presents Bias & Compliance: Tax Research Trends and Outreach Needs for Small Business/Self-Employed Taxpayers at Oregon today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Roberta Mann:

This presentation is an adaptation of one presented to the IRS SB/SE Research Team in Spring 2021 that focuses on how racial and gender bias can be identified in small business tax expenditures research, prompted by President Biden’s 2021 Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.  The presentation will explain why bias matters in tax research by analyzing the historical context of certain provisions such as joint filing as well as other tax expenditures, which are akin to federal spending programs.  Then it will focus on how bias is identified in existing litigation approaches as well tax research, including a discussion on constitutional issues relating to disparate impact.  

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Realtime Inequality: The First Timely Statistics On Income And Wealth Growth In The United States

New York Times Op-Ed:  Wealth Inequality Is the Highest Since World War II, by Peter Coy:

Gross domestic product is a useful metric of a nation’s economic success, but what you’d also like to know is who reaps the benefit when it grows — the rich, the poor, the middle class or everyone. During the pandemic, for example, we know that government benefits helped the poor, while stimulative monetary policy pushed up stock prices and benefited the rich in particular. What was the net result?

Three economists at the University of California, Berkeley — the postdoctoral researcher Thomas Blanchet and the professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman — have created an online tool to answer that question quickly and thoroughly. The tool, which calculates how economic growth is distributed across income and wealth groups, is called Realtime Inequality. It’s valuable for two reasons: It gives fresh insight into what has happened to various strata of the U.S. population during the pandemic; and it’s effectively a prototype for a measure that could someday be officially calculated and published by the federal government.

Using the tool’s drop-down menus, you can choose the time period, the unit (household or individual adult), the strata and the definition of income or wealth that you want to graph. ...

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Turley: New Disclosures Undermine Defenses Of Emory Law Journal’s Withdrawal Of Larry Alexander's Publication Offer

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Jonathan Turley (George Washington), “A Prudential Matter”: New Disclosures Undermine Defenses of Emory Law Journal’s Withdrawal of Publication Offer:

A recent publication by Louis Bonham added new information to the controversy over Emory Law Journal withdrawing an offer of publication for San Diego’s Warren Distinguished Professor of Law Larry Alexander due to his refusal to remove criticism of theories of systemic racism. We discussed the controversy last month.  There are a couple of new details on the communications between the editors and Professor Alexander that undermine defenses of the journal by the law school. ...

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The Dan Markel Murder Case: Is Wendi Adelson Now A Suspect?

Following up on last week's post, Feb. 14 Dan Markel Murder Trial Postponed Until May To Give CIA Analyst Time To Analyze Recording Of Conversation Between Katherine Magbanua And Charlie Adelson:

David Lat (Original Jurisdiction), The Dan Markel Case: Justice Delayed, Again:

And another interesting development: is Wendi Adelson now a suspect?

It’s hard to believe that in a few months, eight long years will have passed since the horrific murder of Dan Markel, a renowned law professor. The theory of law enforcement is that after Markel’s bitter divorce from fellow law professor Wendi Adelson, which involved a contentious child-custody battle, the Adelson family hired two hit men to kill Markel. ...

There was an intriguing new mention of Wendi Adelson in the pretrial briefing ...

In late January, in the briefing for motions in limine for Magbanua’s retrial—i.e., motions about what evidence to exclude from the trial—this interesting new nugget surfaced (first flagged by @justice4danm on Twitter):

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Law Students Face Mandatory Bias Training Beginning In Fall 2022 Under Proposed ABA Diversity Accreditation Requirement

Karen Sloan (Reuters), Law Students Face Mandatory Bias Training Under Proposed ABA Rule:

Law schools would have to train students in bias, racism and crosscultural competency under a proposal before the American Bar Association’s policymaking body this month.

The ABA’s House of Delegates on Feb. 14 will consider a series of changes to its law school accreditation rules, including a new requirement that schools provide bias training at least twice during a student’s time on campus — once at the start of their studies and at least once more before they graduate.

In July 2020, 150 law deans signed a letter urging the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to consider such a requirement as part of a wider anti-racism movement in legal education. ...

The council in August approved the proposed new requirement, and it could be in place this fall if the House of Delegates signs off, said William Adams, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education.

But the proposal has garnered skepticism from some inside and outside the legal academy.

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Lesson From The Tax Court: The Innocence Requirement In § 6015(c) Proportional Relief

Section 6015 allows taxpayers to obtain relief from an otherwise joint and several liability.  The statute contains three related provisions allowing relief.  Siblings.  First is the eldest child, traditional innocent spouse relief.  It was formerly in §6013(e) and is now found in §6055(b).  Second is the quite middle child, a proportionate relief provision that basically permits unwinding the jointly filed return.  That’s in §6015(c).  Third is the wild child, an equitable relief provision that permits relief when it would be unfair to impose joint liability.  That’s in §6015(f).

Of these three spousal relief provisions, the wild child §6015(f) gets most of the attention, at least in court, because it is a very facts-and-circumstances determination and so leads to the most disputes between a requesting spouse and the IRS.  There is also robust case law on the bossy oldest child §6015(b) because it has been around the longest, since 1971.

Today’s lesson is about §6015(c), the oft overlooked middle child.  While, arguably, all three provisions involve some concept of innocence, we learn today a crucial difference between how that concept works for (c) relief and (b) relief.  In Tara K. Tobin (Petitioner) and Jeffrey Tobin (Intervenor) v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2021-36 (Nov. 16, 2021) (Judge Guy), an IRS audit disclosed multiple items of unreported income.  Ms. Tobin asked for §6015(c) relief, agreeing to take responsibility for her unreported income items and leaving Mr. Tobin responsible for his.  Mr. Tobin objected, claiming that Ms. Tobin was not innocent enough to qualify for proportional relief.  In a short but useful lesson, we learn why the Tax Court decided for Ms. Tobin.  Details below the fold.

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Death In Paradise

My wife and I, along with 120 other faculty and staff families, are blessed to live on our breathtakingly beautiful campus in two housing developments (here and here) nestled in the Santa Monica Mountain Range. I often greet visitors on a typical glorious weather day (even in February) by saying "welcome to paradise." On Friday, however, death intruded into our campus paradise:

The dog belonged to our CSOL colleague Rob Anderson and his wife and their four children (ages 6, 8, 10, and 12). Rob lays out the incredibly sad story here and here. 

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• NY Times Columnists Agree: Georgetown Law School Should Not Punish Ilya Shapiro For His Tweets
• Video: Optimizing Law Review Submissions
• IRS Offers To Settle Cryptocurrency Case, But Taxpayer Wants Precedent That Mining/Staking Is Not A Realization Event

Sunday:

• NY Times Op-Ed: Evangelical Christianity's Dissension And Renewal
• NY Times Op-Ed: Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services
• WSJ: The Quiet Joy Of Working At 4:00 AM
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

NY Times Op-Ed: Evangelical Christianity's Dissension And Renewal

New York Times Op-Ed:  The Dissenters Trying to Save Evangelicalism From Itself, by David Brooks:

There have been three big issues that have profoundly divided [millions of American Christians]: the white evangelical embrace of Donald Trump, sex abuse scandals in evangelical churches and parachurch organizations, and attitudes about race relations, especially after the killing of George Floyd. ...

Of course there is a lot of division across many parts of American society. But for evangelicals, who have dedicated their lives to Jesus, the problem is deeper. Christians are supposed to believe in the spiritual unity of the church. While differing over politics and other secondary matters, they are in theory supposed to be unified by their shared first love — as brothers and sisters in Christ. Their common devotion is supposed to bring out the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

“We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,” say the opening lines of a famous Christian song commonly known as “By Our Love.” In its chorus it proclaims, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.” The world envisioned by that song seems very far away right now. The bitter recriminations have caused some believers to wonder if the whole religion is a crock.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services

New York Times op-ed:  Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year)):

Over the past two years a refrain has become common in churches and other religious communities: “Join us in person or online.” I was a big proponent of that “or online” part. In March of 2020, we knew little about the new disease spreading rapidly around the world but we knew it was deadly, especially for the elderly. My church was one of the first in our city to forgo meeting in person and switch to an online format, and I encouraged other churches to do the same.

Since then Sunday mornings have varied. Our church met online; then met indoors with limited attendance, masks and social distancing; then met outdoors; then, after vaccines, indoors again. Precautions rose and fell according to our city’s threat level. But even as most churches now offer in-person services, the “or online” option has remained. I think this is good, given how unusual the past two years have been.

Now I think it’s time to drop the virtual option. And I think this for the same reason I believed churches should go online back in March 2020: This is the way to love God and our neighbors.

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WSJ: The Quiet Joy Of Working At 4:00 AM

Following up on my previous post:  Wall Street Journal, The Quiet Joys of the Very, Very Early Morning Club:

I’m writing this column at 4 a.m., but I need to level with you: It’s nowhere near as romantic as that sounds. I am not sitting in a hotel lobby, tuxedo bow tie unfurled, cigar smoldering in an ashtray, pecking at an old Underwood typewriter after a long night out with movie stars, rock gods and other assorted fabulous people.

The truth is I fell asleep last night right after reading to my kids. I passed out shortly before 9 p.m. ...

I’m awake because over the past two years, I’ve joined a new club: the very, very early morning club. I know a lot of people have lives and jobs that require them to wake up extremely early, but this is a new lifestyle for me. It took two small children and one pandemic that kept us all home to figure out that if I was going to continue to be productive, and write nonsense humor columns like this one, I was going to need to be productive at an uncommon hour, sitting alone in the dark.

Staying up late is out of the question. Sure, I used to be able to do it when I was younger, have a cup of Dunkin’ at 9 p.m. and slug it out, but these days, asking me to stay up to watch the 11 p.m. news is like asking me to climb K2. “Saturday Night Live” actually live, on Saturday night? That’s something that hellions do.

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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 joining the list at #4 and #5:

1. [632 Downloads]  On the Evolving VAT Concept of Fixed Establishment, by Rita de la Feria (Leeds; Google Scholar)
2. [327 Downloads]  Principles-based Tax Drafting and Friends. On Rules, Standards, Fictions and Legal Principles, by Hans Gribnau (Tilburg) & Sonja Dusarduijn (Tilburg)
3. [267 Downloads]  The Proposal for a Minimum Global Tax: Critical Reflections, by Leopoldo Parada (Leeds; Google Scholar)
4. [173 Downloads]  Public Rights and Taxation: A Brief Response to Professor Parrillo, by Ann Woolhandler (Virginia; Google Scholar)
5. [162 Downloads]  The New International Tax Regime, by Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar)

NY Times Columnists Agree: Georgetown Law School Should Not Punish Ilya Shapiro For His Tweets

Michelle Goldberg, Georgetown Law, Don’t Punish Your New Hire Over His ‘Lesser Black Woman’ Tweet:

Georgetown’s law school — where Shapiro was to serve as a senior lecturer and executive director of its Center for the Constitution — overreacted, placing Shapiro on leave pending an investigation into whether his tweets violated school policies on professional conduct, discrimination and harassment. Georgetown’s Black Law Students Association started a petition demanding his firing; as of Thursday morning it had more than 1,000 signatures. “Shapiro’s racist rhetoric and continued association with the university sends the visceral message that even if Black women attend the best law schools, hold the highest clerkships and serve on the most prestigious courts, they still are not good enough,” it said.

I wouldn’t argue with anyone who interprets Shapiro’s insulting tweets that way. Nevertheless, it is a mistake for Georgetown to investigate or punish him, for two reasons, one abstract and one strategic.

The abstract one is that however offensive Shapiro’s words were, they’re also the sort of political speech that should be protected by basic notions of academic freedom, which is why a number of people who detest what Shapiro said criticized Georgetown’s move. As The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer wrote, “I’ve made my feelings about what he said clear but it’s impossible for academic institutions to fulfill their missions if they fire or punish people under circumstances like these.”

But punishing Shapiro for his tweets isn’t a bad idea just in principle. It also threatens to undermine the value of academic freedom at a time when that value is under sustained assault in many red states. ...

[P]rogressives will need allies if they’re to have any hope of mounting a political response to this new mania for academic repression. That requires some intellectual consistency. You can’t appeal to a transcendent ideal in one part of the country while traducing it in another. At least, you can’t do it and expect to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you.

John McWhorter, Don’t Assume Ilya Shapiro’s ‘Lesser Black Woman’ Tweet Was Racist:

His suspension is unnecessary and unjust.

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This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Roundup, Commentary On The Ilya Shapiro Controversy At Georgetown
2. MarketWatch, Jeff Bezos’s $200 Million, 50-Year Naming-Rights Deal With The Smithsonian Does Not Include A ‘Morals Clause’
3. Los Angeles Times, UCLA Students Lead Strike, Sit-In To Protest Return To In-Person Classes
4. Belinda Dantley (Saint Louis) & Lisa Sonia Taylor (American), Law Schools Need To Get Serious About the Work Of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion 
5. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine Pixie Dust
6. Tallahassee Democrat, Feb. 14 Dan Markel Murder Trial Postponed Until May To Give CIA Analyst Time To Analyze Recording Of Conversation Between Katherine Magbanua And Charlie Adelson
7. Daniel Hemel (Chicago), How Treasury And The IRS Have Allowed High-Net-Worth Taxpayers To Exploit Stepped-Up Basis On Intergenerational Wealth Transfers
8. New York Times, Georgetown Suspends Lecturer Who Criticized Biden's Vow To Put Black Woman On Supreme Court
9. National Law Journal, COVID-19 Tuition Refund Fights Heat Up In Appeals Courts
10. C.J. Ryan (Louisville) & Derek Muller (Iowa), The Secret Sauce: Examining Law Schools that Overperform on the Bar Exam

Video: Optimizing Law Review Submissions

Advice from an Indiana Law Journal Executive Articles Editor on optimizing your article submission! Professors Lederman (Indiana-Bloomington) & Choi (Minnesota) co-host this interview with Indiana Law 3L Abbi Semnisky and also share insights. Prof. Lederman was a Note & Comment editor on the NYU Law Review. Prof. Choi was Bluebooking Editor on the Yale Law Journal. Prof. Choi also shares Minnesota Law Review statistics.

The articles/resources mentioned in the video include the following:

• William Turnier (North Carolina), Tax (and Lots of Other) Scholars Need Not Apply: The Changing Venue for Scholarship, 50 J. Legal Ed. 189 (2001)
• Dan Subotnik (Touro), A Law Review Editor and Faculty Author Learn to Speak Honestly, 32 Touro L. Rev. 441 (2016)
• Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU), Why Does a Creepy Co-Worker Keep Getting a Pass?, New York Times Magazine (June 12, 2018)
• Jon Choi's Bluebook-Format Reference Manager
• Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings
• U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings

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IRS Offers To Settle Cryptocurrency Case, But Taxpayer Wants Precedent That Mining/Staking Is Not A Realization Event

Press Release, Taxpayer Lawsuit Demands Confirmation of Tax Treatment of Staking Rewards:

Today, the Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA), a leading blockchain industry association, celebrated important news: as part of ongoing federal litigation (Jarrett v. United States, No. 3:21-cv-00419 (M.D. Tenn.)), the government has offered to refund plaintiff Joshua Jarrett for the taxes he paid when he created new property through staking, a sign that the IRS may no longer attempt to tax tokens created through staking moving forward. Despite this initial victory, Jarrett is refusing the refund and continuing with his case, as without such a ruling there will be nothing to prevent the IRS from challenging him again on this issue.

Jarrett paid income tax for 2019 on new tokens he created through staking. Contending that property that is created—like bread baked by a baker or a novel written by an author—is only taxed when it is sold, Jarrett filed for a refund in August 2020. The IRS ignored Jarrett's refund claim, forcing him to pursue the matter in federal court. Today, court filings reveal that the government has offered to grant this refund, an early sign suggesting that the IRS will not tax property created through staking until it is sold.

POSA, and the broad coalition it represents, applauds Jarrett's decision to continue his lawsuit. He has rejected the IRS's offer of a refund, opening up the possibility of a court ruling that will give him, and millions of other taxpayers in the same position, the ability to confidently plan for the future. The importance of this issue has been raised by many, including Coin Center, the Blockchain Association, and several Members of Congress. ...

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Kim Reviews Warren's Evaluating The Oxford Corporate Cash Flow Tax Proposal

This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Utah; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Alvin C. Warren Jr. (Harvard), Evaluating the Oxford Proposal for a Corporate Cash Flow Tax, 173 Tax Notes Fed. 1223 (Nov. 29, 2021).  

Many tax commentators would remember the discourse on the proposed "destination-based cash flow tax (DBCFT)" during the presidential election debate in 2016-17. Although I lamented the acronym of the proposal, DBCFT, as an unwelcome addition to the already-crowded alphabet soup in tax law, such as CFC, ECI, PE, TOB, CEN, CIN, UBIT, DRD, GILTI, and so on, I enjoyed the concept itself, which is to replace the traditional corporate income tax with taxation of a corporation's domestic cash flow. I particularly enjoyed the comments by Michael Devereux (Oxford) and Alan Auerbach (Berkeley), who are renowned experts in business cash flow taxation. The DBCFT proposal was not included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017.

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Billionaires Get Rare Shot at NFL (And Tax) Glory With Denver Broncos Sale
• Bloomberg, How U.S. Income Tax Policy Became Mostly About the 1%
• Bloomberg, IRS Sends 1,200 Employees To Tackle Tax Refund Backlog
• Bloomberg, Joe Manchin Gave a Fresh Hint on What He Wants From a Skinny Build Back Better: 'Just Fix the Tax Code'
• Bloomberg, A New Way to Tax Global Corporations

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• Rory Bahadur (Washburn) & Catherine Bramble (BYU), Actively Achieving Greater Racial Equity in the Law School Classroom
• William Carney (Emory), Curricular Change In Legal Education
• Christine Charnosky (Law.com), Ilya Shapiro, On Heels Of Georgetown Law Hiring, Faces Uproar Over Tweeting That Biden's SCOTUS Pick Will Be A 'Lesser Black Woman'
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine Pixie Dust
• College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, Women in the Leadership Pipeline in Higher Education Have Better Representation and Pay in Institutions With Female Presidents and Provosts
• Belinda Dantley (Saint Louis) & Lisa Sonia Taylor (American), The Bottom Line: Law Schools Need To Get Serious About the Work Of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion 

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, February 7: Caroline Bruckner (American; Google Scholar) will present Bias & Compliance: Tax Research Trends and Outreach Needs for Small Business/Self-Employed Taxpayers as part of the Oregon Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Roberta Mann. 

Wednesday, February 9: Chief Judge Maurice B. Foley (San Diego) will present Mountains and Mentors: My Path to the Court as part of the annual San Diego Richard Crawford Pugh Lecture on Tax Law & Policy. If you would like to attend, register here. 

Thursday, February 10: Michael Doran (Virginia; Google Scholar) will present The Great American Retirement Fraud as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Lawrence Zelenak.

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Ryan & Muller: Law Schools That Overperform On The Bar Exam

Christopher J. Ryan (Louisville; Google Scholar) & Derek T. Muller (Iowa; Google Scholar), The Secret Sauce: Examining Law Schools that Overperform on the Bar Exam:

Despite recent signs of improvement, since 2010, law schools have faced declining enrollment and entering classes with lower predictors of success. At least partly as a result, the rates at which law school graduates pass the bar exam have declined and remain at historic lows. Yet, during this time, many schools have improved their graduates’ chances of success on the bar exam, and some schools have dramatically outperformed their predicted bar exam passage rates. Our study examines which schools do so and why.

We began our research by accounting for law schools’ incoming class credentials to predict an expected bar exam passage rate for each ABA-accredited law school. We then examined each law school’s aggregated performance on the bar exam tests for which its graduates sat based on relative and absolute performance, weighing the difficulty of each state’s bar exam. Through this analysis, we identified law schools that have consistently higher and lower first-time bar exam passage rates over a period of six years: 2014-2019. In addition to identifying overperforming law schools on the bar exam, our methodology is a novel contribution not only to the legal education literature but also to the quantitative methodological literature, given its unique tailoring of the classic value-added modeling design to the realities of the bar exam.

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Hemel: How Treasury And The IRS Have Allowed High-Net-Worth Taxpayers To Exploit Stepped-Up Basis On Intergenerational Wealth Transfers

Daniel J. Hemel (Chicago; Google Scholar), 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:

This document, prepared as a response to a Question for the Record from House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Oversight Chair Bill Pascrell, explains how previous actions by Treasury and the IRS have facilitated strategies that allow high-net-worth individuals and families to exploit stepped-up basis while also avoiding federal estate and gift taxes on intergenerational transfers of wealth.

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Creating Online Education Spaces To Support Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, And Wellbeing

Lisa Bliss (Georgia State), Susan L. Brooks (Drexel) & Chaumtoli Huq (CUNY), Creating Online Education Spaces to Support Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Wellbeing, 14 Atlanta's J. Marshall L.J. __ (2022):

The pivot to online education during the pandemic has led those who teach students at all levels to explore how to promote student engagement in online classes. While building and enhancing teacher capability with online teaching is important, given the social unrest and other political, social, and emotional challenges presented by the pandemic, perhaps especially in the law school context, expertise with shifting the teaching of legal doctrine to online modalities alone is not enough. Law teachers need to consider how they can bring an anti-racist and trauma-informed lens and a focus on wellbeing to their online pedagogy and create learning communities that are democratic, inclusive, and caring. While this article was inspired by recent events, its co-authors share a longstanding commitment to these ideas and strongly believe they are applicable across many contexts, including legal education.

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ABA Tax Section Virtual 2022 Midyear Meeting

This week's ABA Tax Section virtual 2022 Midyear Meeting (program) concludes today. Tax Profs with speaking roles included:

• Consequences of Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta:  Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Lloyd Mayer (Notre Dame)
• ESG and Tax Policy – Responsible Tax Policies for a Better Future:  Susan Gary (Oregon), Janet Milne (Vermont)
• Increases in Math Error Notices:  Leslie Book (Villanova)
• Low-Income SALT – Advocating for Low-Income Taxpayers in State Tax Matters:  Caleb Smith (Minnesota)
• Riding the Tax Reform Wave in Real Time:  Paul Caron (Pepperdine), Susan Morse (Texas)

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Holderness Presents Taxing Remote Income Under A Forgiving Constitution Today At Wake Forest

Hayes R. Holderness (Richmond) presents Taxing Remote Income Under A Forgiving Constitution at Wake Forest today: 

The surge in remote work arrangements brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic threatens serious disruptions to state tax systems. Billions of dollars in tax collections are at stake as traditional tax rules for sourcing income among the states based on the physical location of the worker result in large amounts of income shifting from states of employers to states of workers’ residences. Faced with these new remote working conditions, some states have revised their tax rules by looking to the location of the employer to source a worker’s income, drawing the ire of other states as the multistate tax balance becomes disrupted. One state, New Hampshire, even sued a state that had changed its rules, Massachusetts, in the Supreme Court, alleging that Massachusetts had committed grave constitutional violations and infringed on New Hampshire’s sovereignty.

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Virginia Tax Review Publishes New Issue

The Virginia Tax Review has published Vol. 40, No. 2 (Winter 2021):

• Eduardo Baistrocchi (London School of Economics, Law School; Google Scholar), The International Tax Regime and Global Power Shifts, 40 Va. Tax Rev. 219 (2021)
• Noam Noked (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law; Google Scholar), Defense of Primary Taxing Rights, 40 Va. Tax Rev. 341 (2021)
• Heather D. Schafroth (Caplin & Dysdale, Washington, D.C.), "Cui Bono Fuisset": Coordinating U.S. Tax Statutes with U.S. Tax Treaties, 40 Va. Tax Rev. 371 (2021)

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