Pennell & Weisbord: Trust Alteration And The Dead Hand Paradox

Jeffrey Pennell (Emory) & Reid K. Weisbord (Rutgers), Trust Alteration and the Dead Hand Paradox, 48 ACTEC L.J. __ (2023):

Trusts are popular instruments for wealth transmission because they can be crafted to suit almost any imaginable estate planning goal that is not contrary to public policy. With the abrogation of the Rule Against Perpetuities in most states, settlors may impose trust terms that will be legally enforceable for scores of future generations, if not in perpetuity. Long-term and perpetual trusts, however, present a paradox of dead hand control, because the specificity and the durability of settlor-imposed restrictions tend to be inversely related. As donative preferences become increasingly specific and restrictive, trusts become less durable with the passage of time, as changing circumstances imperil the settlor’s original intent or render the trust unadministrable.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• Above the Law, Drowning In Debt? You Might Be A Graduate Of One Of These Law Schools
• Above the Law, Law Professor Responds To Supreme Court Leak With Racist Commentary. Gee, I Wonder Which Law School...
• Above the Law, Law School Changes Exam. .. Via Email ... Which Students Couldn't Check ... BECAUSE THE EXAM HAD STARTED
• Above the Law, So Uhh ... About That Con Law Final Next Week...
• Above the Law, The Best Law Schools For Diversity (2022)
• Bacon's Rebellion, How Partisan Bias Affects Law School Rankings
• Daily Business Review, Miami Law Offering Free Virtual Summer Legal Academy for Third Year

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Jones & Maynard: Unfulfilled Promises Of The FinTech Revolution

Lindsay Sain Jones (Georgia-Terry Business School; Google Scholar) & Goldburn Maynard Jr. (Indiana-Kelley Business School; Google Scholar), Unfulfilled Promises of the FinTech Revolution, 111 Cal. L. Rev. ___ (2023):

Racial wealth inequality is complex. While not entirely to blame, lack of access to credit and financial services, lower rates of return, and discrimination have contributed to this persistent gap. Some are hopeful that financial technology (fintech) can address these underlying issues by broadening access to capital and providing fairer lending standards, better investment advice, and more secure transactions. Indeed, key players in the industry promote fintech as a primary means to advance financial inclusion for minorities. Despite promises of financial inclusion from the fintech industry, however, underserved populations continue to experience unequal access to financial services and wealth. This Paper evaluates claims relating to key components of the so-called “fintech revolution” to determine whether they can address underlying causes of wealth inequality.

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As Temple Dean Begins Serving 14-Month Sentence For U.S. News Rankings Fraud, Tenured Professor Is Defiant At Sentencing Hearing: 'Every Single University Has People Doing The Same Exact Operations'

Following up on my previous post, Former Temple Dean Sentenced To 14 Months In Federal Prison For Rankings Fraud:  

Poets & Quants, Moshe Porat, Denied Bail, Will Begin Prison Sentence On May 9:

Philadlphia Inquirer, Ex-Temple Employees Sentenced to Probation for Fraud Tied to Business School Rankings:

A former administrator and a retired statistics professor at Temple University were sentenced to probation this week for assisting the former dean of its business school in a scheme to inflate its position in national rankings publications.

But standing before a federal judge in Philadelphia, Marjorie O’Neill, a onetime finance manager at the Fox School of Business, and Isaac Gottlieb, who was a tenured professor, struck vastly different tones when it came to accepting responsibility for a scandal that has since cost the university millions in legal settlements.

O’Neill admitted last year that she, under the direction of former dean Moshe Porat, had falsified data on students at the school to help propel it to the top of influential lists like U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of top business school programs. She told U.S. District Judge Gerald A Pappert during a hearing Thursday that she was “thoroughly ashamed.” ...

Meanwhile, Gottlieb — who helped Fox cheat more effectively by reverse engineering the criteria by which U.S. News ranked schools — showed flashes of defiance at his sentencing hearing Wednesday. “Every single university in the United States has people doing the same exact operations,” he said. ...

“It is important for other institutions to realize that this chase for rankings is not worth it,” the judge said Thursday. “There are lines you can’t cross. It’s important for people to see there are going to be criminal consequences and penalties for doing that.” ...

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Lesson From The Tax Court: Avoiding The 2-Year Lookback Period In Bankruptcy

Today’s lesson is about how to maximize the discharge of tax liabilities through bankruptcy.  It's a lesson on timing.  Last year I blogged two cases showing how a bankruptcy tolls both the collection and assessment limitation periods in the Tax Code.  See Lesson From The Tax Court: For Whom The Bankruptcy Tolls, TaxProf Blog (July 19, 2021).  Today’s lesson is the flip side: we learn how taxpayers who want to discharge old tax liabilities through bankruptcy need to be careful about how the two-year lookback exception to discharge may be tolled by provisions in the Tax Code.

I offer today’s lesson in honor of Bob Pope, who died on April 29th.  Bob was one of those remarkable attorneys who could navigate the complex interplay of bankruptcy and tax law.  He was one of the founders of the Tax Collections, Bankruptcy and Workouts Committee in the ABA Section of Taxation, along with Paul Asofsky, Fran Sheehy, Ken Weil, and Mark Wallace.  He will be missed.

Bob would appreciate today’s lesson.  In Robert J. Norberg and Debra L. Norberg v. Commissioner, T. C. Memo 2022-30 (Apr. 5, 2022) (Judge Lauber), the taxpayers filed their 2016 return in February 2019 without paying the tax they reported due.  When the IRS started collection, the Norbergs asked for a CDP hearing.  When they got to Tax Court in September 2020 they filed a bankruptcy petition, hoping to wipe out the liability.  They failed because they mis-timed their bankruptcy petition.  An irony is that these taxpayers could have likely gotten their desired discharge if they had ignored the siren song of CDP.  Bob could have taught them that.  And, if you click below the fold, you too can learn this lesson on how to maximize the discharge of tax liabilities in bankruptcy.

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Following Charlie Adelson's Arrest, Attention Shifts To Katherine Magbanua's May 16 Trial In Dan Markel's Murder

Updates on Katherine Magbanua's May 16 trial:

• Tallahassee Democrat, Katherine Magbanua Trial Still on for May 16 Despite Charlie Adelson Arrest
• WCTV, Judge Says Magbanua’s Retrial Will Go on as Scheduled
• WFSU, Magbanua's Retrial in Dan Markel Murder Case Will Go Forward May 16
• WTXL, Court Holds Hearing to Include, Exclude Evidence in Magbanua Trial
• WTXL, Leon County Judge Approves Several Motions Before Magbanua's Trial
• YouTube Video, Judge Approves Several Motions Before Katherine Magbanua's Trial

Upates on Charlie Adelson's arrest:

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• NY Times: ABA May Eliminate Standardized Tests For Law School Admissions
• Louis Brandeis, Antitrust, And A Functioning Tax System
• 8th Annual Parris Awards At Pepperdine Caruso Law School

Sunday:

• NY Times Op-Ed: How To Cultivate Joy Even When It Feels In Short Supply
• WSJ Op-Ed: The Blessing Of A Mother’s Love
• NY Times Op-Ed: Why I Pray To A God I Don’t Believe In
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

NY Times Op-Ed: How To Cultivate Joy Even When It Feels In Short Supply

New York Times Op-Ed:  How to Cultivate Joy Even When It Feels in Short Supply, 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)):

In the Bible, there’s a question that Paul asks in his letter to the Galatian church that has haunted me for the last couple of years: What has happened to all your joy?

I don’t think that many people looking at the church in America today or at broader American society would say, “Now, there is a group of people marked by joy.”

In a 2020 survey, happiness and well-being among Americans reached a 50-year low. But it’s a deeper issue than just that. Joy is hardier and sturdier than mere happiness or positive circumstances, closer in meaning to contentment than amusement. The current state of our cultural discourse seems to be joylessness writ large. ...

Our culture desperately needs to rethink and rediscover joy. ...

How can I possibly cultivate joy? ... There will inevitably be traffic jams and illnesses, afternoons when I feel grumpy or mornings that I don’t want to get out of bed. But joy can be taken up, even when things aren’t going great. “Joy is both a gift and a practice,” I wrote in my last book, “but it isn’t primarily a feeling any more than self-control or faithfulness are feelings. It is a muscle we can strengthen with exercise.” ...

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WSJ Op-Ed: The Blessing Of A Mother’s Love

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  The Blessing of a Mother’s Love, by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” I understand this insight more fully when I reflect on the earthly blessing of a mother’s love.

Contemplation of this doesn’t require a doctorate in theology. I’ve always found the bond between a mother and her son, from the latter’s perspective, to be the most uncomplicated of human relationships. She’s your mom and you love her, simple as that.

Memories of her positive influence in my life are legion, yet the best evidence of the transcendence of a mother’s love is the spell it casts on its beloved. While the years have been good to my mom, I’m told she is aging. I say “I’m told” because whenever I gaze at her, I see only the cool lady in her mid-30s picking me up after soccer. In my mind’s eye, she is forever young.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Why I Pray To A God I Don’t Believe In

New York Times Op-Ed:  How to Pray to a God You Don’t Believe In, by Scott Hershovitz (Michigan; Author, Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy With My Kids (2022)):

The world is awful at the moment. Millions have died of Covid-19. Authoritarianism is on the rise, abroad and at home. And now there’s war, with all the death, destruction and dislocation that entails.

In dark times, many people seek refuge in religion. They hold fast to their faith. ... But darkness also drives many people away from God.

[T]he “problem of evil” [is] an old philosophical question. [I]f you think about God (who’s supposed to be all-powerful and endlessly empathetic), the existence of evil poses a serious puzzle: Why does God let us suffer?

People have proposed many answers, but most are poorly reasoned. For instance, some say that good requires evil — that it can’t exist without it. It’s not clear why that would be true. But the bigger problem is that if you take that view, you call into question God’s omnipotence. It turns out there’s something God can’t do: create good without evil.

But also: If good requires evil, maybe just a little bit would do. Is absolutely every evil in the world essential? Why can’t we have a world that’s just like this one — except without that twinge of pain I felt last Tuesday? What kind of God can’t soothe my sciatica? My physical therapist, Tony, makes my back feel better, and he doesn’t even claim to be a deity.

He is a hero, though (at least to me). And some say that’s why God allows evil in the world. He doesn’t care about pleasure and pain. He cares about what pleasure and pain make possible — compassion, redemption and heroic acts, like Tony mending my back. To get those goods, though, God has to give us free will. And once we have it, some of us abuse it.

This is, historically, the most influential answer. ... But I don’t buy it. Why can’t God create only those people who would use their free will well? Why can’t he wave Paul Farmer through and keep Vladimir Putin out? He knows in advance how each of them will act — if he’s really omniscient.

Some believers feel the force of these arguments, but maintain their faith nonetheless. Marilyn McCord Adams, a philosopher and Episcopal priest, doubted that we could explain the existence of evil. But that didn’t bother her. A 2-year-old child, she explained, might not understand why his mother would permit him to have painful surgery. Nevertheless, he could be convinced of his mother’s love by her “intimate care and presence” through the painful experience.

For those who feel the presence of God or have faith that they will feel it later, I think Ms. Adams’s attitude makes some sense. But if I’m honest, it sounds too optimistic to me. ... I think the problem of evil poses a serious barrier to religious belief.

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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 #131 among 16,795 tax papers in all-time downloads:

1. [2,112 Downloads]  Pillar 2: Rule Order, Incentives, and Tax Competition, by Michael Devereux (Oxford; Google Scholar), John Vella (Oxford) & Heydon Wardell-Burrus (Oxford)
2. [896 Downloads]  Amazon and the State Aid Tax Saga, by Leopoldo Parada (Leeds; Google Scholar)
3. [504 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; moving to NYU; Google Scholar)
4. [335 Downloads]  Taxing Robots, by Rita de la Feria (Leeds; Google Scholar) & Maria Amparo Grau Ruiz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Google Scholar)
5. [331 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)

NY Times: ABA May Eliminate Standardized Tests For Law School Admissions

New York Times, American Bar Association May Eliminate Standardized Tests for Admissions:

No more LSATs?

A committee within the American Bar Association recommended late last month that law schools eliminate the requirement of “a valid and reliable admission test” as part of their admission process.

Its memo added, however, “Law schools of course remain free to require a test if they wish.”

The recommendation was made on April 25 by the Strategic Review Committee, four years after another group, the A.B.A.’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, approved similar changes to its standards for rules and admissions. The council is made up of 21 people, including lawyers, professors, administrators and others. ...

Leaders in the bar association have said that they are less concerned about student performance on an entrance exam than how students do in law school — whether they remain enrolled and how soon they pass the bar exam after graduation.

LSAC:

Studies show test-optional policies often work against minoritized individuals, so we hope the ABA will consider these issues very carefully. We believe the LSAT will continue to be a vital tool for schools and applicants for years to come, as it is the most accurate predictor of law school success and a powerful tool for diversity when used properly as one factor in a holistic admission process.

For a thoughtful detailed analysis, see Derek Muller (Iowa), What Happens If the ABA Ends the Requirement That Law Schools Have an Admissions Test? Maybe Less Than You Think

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This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Distinguishing Employees From Independent Contractors
2. ABA, New Bar Pass Data By Race, Ethnicity, Gender
3. Wall Street Journal, Annual Reviews And OKRs Are A Terrible Way To Evaluate Employees
4. Alliance Defending Freedom, Christian Legal Society Members Sue Law School For Punishing Them For Expressing Their Religious Beliefs
5. Wall Street Journal, Jones Day Finds USC Dean Intentionally Reported False Data To U.S. News To Goose Its Ranking
6. Tax Prof Move, Daniel Hemel Leaves Chicago For NYU
7. Neil Hamilton (St. Thomas) & Lou Bilionis (Cincinnati), Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals
8. Christopher Mathis (Iowa), An Access And Equity Ranking Of America's 63 Public Law Schools
9. Sloan Speck (Colorado), Blue J's Use Of Machine Learning To Predict Tax Litigation Results
10. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine Caruso Law), The Chosen At Pepperdine Caruso Law

Louis Brandeis, Antitrust, And A Functioning Tax System

Jasper L. Cummings, Jr. (Alston & Bird, Raleigh, NC), Louis Brandeis, Antitrust, and a Functioning Tax System, 175 Tax Notes Fed. 241 (Apr. 11, 2022):

In this article, Cummings wonders what happened to Justice Louis Brandeis’s approach to deciding federal tax cases and whether it has anything to do with antitrust policy. ...

Justice Louis D. Brandeis was one of that small group of justices who wore the “tax wreath” during his tenure on the Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. The chief justices assigned him the routine opinions in tax cases, which usually involved complex business arrangements or difficult but small-bore interpretational issues, or both. His fellow justices honored him by almost never dissenting or even concurring, and the few times they did, never writing a rebuttal to his reasoning.

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8th Annual Parris Awards At Pepperdine Caruso Law School

Congratulations to our student, staff, and faculty winners at the 8th Annual Parris Awards at Pepperdine Caruso Law:

Student Awards

Evan T. Carthen 1L Inspirational Leadership Award
Section A: Phillip Allevato
Section B: Grace Ramsey
Section C: Mason Folse

Excellence in Service
Rebecca Voth

Excellence in Professionalism
Alina Ahmed

Excellence in Peacemaking
Tyler Clark

Excellence in Courage
Natalie Burkholder

Excellence in Leadership
Lindsey Kirchhoff

Excellence in Character
Thurgood Wynn

Pepperdine Award
Joseph Castro

Preceptor Award
Awards are also presented to alumni preceptors, who are paired with first-year students as mentors during their first year of law school

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Elkins Reviews International Response To The U.S. Tax Haven By Noked & Marcone

This week, David Elkins (Netanya, visiting NYU 2021-2023; Google Scholar) reviews Noam Noked (Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK); Google Scholar) & Zachary Marcone (CUHK), International Response to the U.S. Tax Haven, 48 Yale J. Int’l L. ___ (2022):

The term “tax haven” tends to evoke images of sparsely populated Caribbean islands with pristine beaches and whose most important industry is the registration of corporations. Alternatively, it may bring to mind countries such as Switzerland or Luxembourg, whose banking laws have traditionally provided for strict secrecy, enabling wealthy individuals to shield their capital and income from the prying eyes of their home countries’ tax authorities.

Wherever they may be and whatever function they serve, tax havens have been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism in recent years. The United States has been particularly active in this regard. One of the primary tools in its arsenal is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) that prohibits foreign financial institutions from aiding and abetting tax evasion by U.S. persons. Foreign financial institutions that run afoul of these regulations are subject to stiff penalties (even, it may be noted, when abiding by the regulations would constitute a violation of local law).

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• AccessLex Institute, 2022 Legal Education Data Deck
• Alliance Defending Freedom, Idaho Law Students File Suit After University Punishes Them For Their Religious Beliefs
• Kevin Brown (Indiana) & Ken Dau-Schmidt (Indiana), Racial and Ethnic Ancestry of the Nation’s Black Law Students: An Analysis of Data From The LSSSE Survey
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine Caruso Law), The Chosen At Pepperdine Caruso Law
• Cyra Akila Choudhury (Florida Int'l) & Shruti Rana (Indiana), Addressing Asian (In)Visibility in the Academy
• Federalist Society 10th Annual Executive Branch Review Conference, ABA Accreditation of Law Schools
• Scott Fruehwald (Legal Skills Prof Blog), "Teaching" Professional Identity: A New Book for Administrators and Professors (For more on this book, see after the fold)

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Biden’s Billionaire Tax: Slaying the Golden Goose
• Bloomberg, Massachusetts Eyes Baby Bond Program to Narrow Racial Wealth Gap
• Business Insider, Biden Says Rick Scott's Controversial Tax Plan Is 'Extreme, As Most MAGA Things Are'
• Business Insider, The IRS Could Auto-Fill Nearly Half of Taxpayers Returns, According to a New Paper — Meaning They Wouldn't Have to Spend Time and Money Filing Their Taxes
• Forbes, Senators Propose New Crypto Bill Limiting Capital Gains Tax

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Bearer-Friend Presents Colorblind Tax Enforcement Today At Leeds

Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington; Google Scholar) presents Colorblind Tax Enforcement, 97 N.Y.U. L. Rev. ___ (2022), at Leeds today, co-hosted by the Centre for Business Law and Practice and the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies (register here).

The United States Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) has repeatedly taken the position that, because the IRS does not ask taxpayers to identify their race or ethnicity on submitted tax returns, IRS enforcement actions are not affected by taxpayers' race or ethnicity. This claim, which I call “colorblind tax enforcement,” has been made by multiple IRS Commissioners serving in multiple Administrations (both Democratic and Republican). This claim has been made to members of Congress and to members of the press.

In this article, I refute the IRS position that racial bias cannot occur under current IRS practices. I do so by identifying the conditions under which race and ethnicity could determine tax enforcement outcomes under three separate models of racial bias: racial animus, implicit bias, and transmitted bias. I then demonstrate how such conditions can be present across seven distinct tax enforcement settings regardless of whether IRS asks about race or ethnicity. The IRS enforcement settings analyzed include summonses, civil penalty assessments, collection due process hearings, innocent spouse relief, and DOJ referrals.

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Sanchirico: Should A Global Minimum Tax Be Country-By-Country?

Chris William Sanchirico (Penn; Google Scholar), Should a Global Minimum Tax Be Country-by-Country?, 175 Tax Notes Fed. 549 (Apr. 25, 2022):

In this report, Sanchirico questions the consensus view that a country-by-country approach to global minimum tax design is superior to one based on across-country averaging.

Conclusion
This report shows in the context of a simple game theoretic model that a global minimum tax regime that operates on a country-by-country basis is not necessarily superior to one that is based on global averaging — at least not from the perspective of the high-tax jurisdictions spearheading reform.

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D.C. Limits Seating For July Bar Exam, Sparking Outcry

Law.com, 'Tremendously Disruptive': DC Court of Appeals Limits Seating for July Bar Exam, Sparking Outcry:

Law school deans across the country have expressed outrage over the D.C. Court of Appeals’ May 2 announcement that seating for the July 2022 Uniform Bar Exam will be limited to 1,100 and that preference will be given to students from D.C.-area law schools.

The standard administration of the July 2022 Uniform Bar Exam will take place at the D.C. Armory on July 26 and 27 with the seating capacity for the exam set at 1,100, which includes all standard and accommodated seating with registration closing once the seating capacity is reached, according to an announcement on the D.C. Court of Appeals website.

This morning, a letter, signed by more than 100 law deans, was sent to Court of Appeals Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, expressing concern about the limited seating. ...

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Tax Law Review Publishes New Issue

The Tax Law Review has published a new issue (Vol. 74, No. 1 (Fall 2020)):

• Michelle Layser (Illinois; moving to San Diego; Google Scholar), How Place-Based Tax Incentives Can Reduce Geographic Inequality, 74 Tax L. Rev. 1 (2020)
• Ethan Yale (Virginia; Google Scholar) & Gregg Polsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Taxing Residential Solar, 74 Tax L. Rev. 69 (2020)

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2022 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition

The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship and American College of Tax Counsel are sponsoring the 2022 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition

Named for the late Tax Court Judge Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., and designed to perpetuate his dedication to legal scholarship of the highest quality, the Tannenwald Writing Competition is open to all full- or part-time law school students, undergraduate or graduate. Papers on any federal or state tax-related topic may be submitted in accordance with the Competition Rules.

Prizes:

• 1st Place:  $5,000
• 2nd Place: $2,500
• 3rd Place:  $1,500

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The Constitutionality And Application Of New York’s Proposed Mark-to-Market Tax

Beckett Cantley (Northeastern) & Geoffrey Dietrich (Cantley Dietrich), The Constitutionality and Application of New York’s Proposed Mark-to-Market Tax, 16 Ohio St. Bus. L.J. __ (2022): 

The state of New York has proposed legislation that would implement a mark-to-market taxation system for its’ billionaire taxpayers. The proposal would tax billionaires on the increase in value that their assets have experienced over the past calendar year, whether or not these assets are sold. The tax would raise significant revenue for the state by eliminating the ability of taxpayers to hold assets until death to receive a “stepped-up” basis. Other policy reasons espoused in support of the tax are that it increases fairness and better reflects actual income. However, there are skeptics of the feasibility and constitutionality of the proposed tax. First, it will be extremely difficult to determine a market value for each asset for purposes of determining the taxpayer’s unrealized appreciation on each asset. Because of this, there will undoubtedly be numerous challenges by billionaire taxpayers to government valuations of the market value of their assets.

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Symposium: Epoch — Going Beyond A Racial Reckoning

Symposium, Epoch: Going Beyond A Racial Reckoning, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 623-654 (2021):

• Foreword, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 623 (2021)
• Michael Rogers (J.D. 2021, Seattle), Hannah Hamley (J.D. 2021, Seattle) & Rayshaun D. Williams (J.D. 2022, Seattle), Introductory Remarks, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 625 (2021)
• Mario Barnes (UC-Irvine; Former Dean, University of Washington), Majidah Cochran (J.D. 2021, Seattle), Danielle Conway (Dean, Penn State-Dickinson), Tamara Lawson (Dean, St. Thomas-FL), L. Song Richardson (President, Colorado College; Former Dean, UC-Irvine) & Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Dean, Boston University), Deans Roundtable, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 627 (2021)
• Marissa Jackson Sow (St. John's; Google Scholar), Whiteness as Contract, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 635 (2021)

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WSJ Op-Ed: A Global Tax System Is Good For The U.S.

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  A Global Tax System Is Good for the U.S., by Jason Furman (Harvard):

The U.S. system for taxing international corporate income has long been dysfunctional. It is needlessly complex and distorts business decisions while failing to raise much revenue, thus forcing higher taxes elsewhere to make up the difference. Policy makers have the best chance in generations to reform and improve this system while bringing the rest of the world along. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already helped craft an international agreement signed by more than 130 countries. Congress now needs to do its part and lock it in.

The two approaches to international taxation are worldwide taxation, in which a corporation’s home country taxes its entire global income, and territorial taxation, in which income is taxed only by the country where it is earned. Neither system is perfect, and both inevitably create some distortions.

A worldwide system can impede the competitiveness of American companies by raising their costs relative to those of competitors legally domiciled in other countries. A territorial system, on the other hand, creates an incentive to locate production and shift reported profits overseas.

Before 2017 the U.S. followed a third approach that that combined some of the worst features of both, which I call a “stupid territorial” tax system. It pretended to tax U.S. corporations on their worldwide foreign earnings but in practice afforded them tremendous opportunity to defer those taxes permanently, in effect allowing them to create a territorial system for themselves while leading to massive buildups of overseas income.

President Trump and the Republican Congress reformed this system, replacing it with a hybrid system that included a minimum tax called Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income, or Gilti, for companies that earned a high rate of return and also paid low taxes overseas. This plan took some steps toward a more rational system, recognizing the necessity of a compromise between worldwide and territorial. But it also took some steps backward on rates and in technical details, like allowing companies to apply the minimum tax based on their worldwide average rate instead of on a country-by-country basis. ...

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Choudhury & Rana: Addressing Asian (In)Visibility In The Academy

Cyra Akila Choudhury (Florida Int'l; Google Scholar) & Shruti Rana (Indiana-Maurer), Addressing Asian (In)Visibility in the Academy, 51 Sw. L. Rev. 287 (2022):

In this Essay, we first examine the dynamics of representation and how they impact and circumscribe the experiences, opportunities, and advancement of Asian American law faculty. We aim to draw attention to the real rather than perceived problems facing Asian American law faculty as well as Asian Americans in the legal profession more generally. We argue that while Asian Americans are, in fact, diverse in their identities and experiences, the predominant perception about them in the legal academy is that they are a monolithic group assimilated to the dominant culture and reflect various iterations of the “model minority myth.” This narrative not only obscures the complexity of the discrimination against Asian American law faculty but also allows the academy to blame individuals for their own marginalization, ignoring the systemic forces at work. Together, these factors elide and mischaracterize the challenges Asian American law faculty face and create obstacles to effective solutions—all with a high human cost.

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Kim: Taxing Teleworkers

Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Utah; moving to Cardozo; Google Scholar), Taxing Teleworkers, 55 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1149 (2021):

Since COVID-19 has forced many governments to restrict travel and impose quarantine requirements, telework has become a way of life. The shift towards teleworking is raising tax concerns for workers who work for employers located in another state than where they live. Most source states where these employers are located could not have taxed income of out-of-state teleworkers under the pre-pandemic tax rules. However, several source states have unilaterally extended their sourcing rule on these teleworkers, resulting in unwarranted risk of double taxation — once by the residence state and again by the source state. At this time, there is no uniform guideline by state or federal governments.

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FedSoc Debate: Should The ABA Be Stripped Of Its Monopoly Law School Accrediting Power?

Federalist Society 10th Annual Executive Branch Review Conference, ABA Accreditation of Law Schools:

The U.S. Department of Education provides oversight of postsecondary institutions or program accreditation by reviewing federally recognized accrediting agencies. There is one such agency for accreditation of legal education institutions or programs: The American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. The Secretary of Education, by law, is the official responsible for recognition of accreditation agencies based on her determination that the agency is a reliable authority as to the quality of education or training provided by the entities and programs the agencies review. The Secretary of Education has exercised that authority to recognize the ABA's Council as the single accreditation agency for legal education. The ABA has held this position since its adoption of comprehensive standards in 1973—nearly fifty years.

But the ABA writ large is an organization in decline as its substantial drop in membership—and resulting revenue—demonstrates. At the same time that ABA membership is declining, the ABA's public and official positions on cultural and divisive issues remain. And now those positions are taking root not just in the ABA's policy bodies but also within the Council itself. Most recently, the Council adopted new "anti-bias" educational requirements as part of its accreditation standards. 

• Hon. W. Scott Bales, Former Chief Justice, Arizona Supreme Court
• Prof. William Jacobson, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic, Cornell Law School
• Dr. Nicholas Lawson, Commissioner, ABA Commission on Disability Rights
• Prof. Derek T. Muller, Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law
• Moderator: Hon. Trevor N. McFadden, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia

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New York Law Firms Open Miami Offices To Service Clients Audited By New York Tax Authorities After Moving To Florida

Law.com, Tax Controversy and Church Insolvency Brought Another New York Law Firm to Miami:

The 21-lawyer, full-service law firm Capell Barnett Matalon & Schoenfeld became among the latest New York law firms to expand to South Florida after firm leaders watched as client needs increasingly spanned the two regions.

This month, the firm announced a Miami office led by counsel David Zandi, a real estate attorney who launched the Capell Barnett’s one-lawyer location at 201 South Biscayne Blvd. in December.

In a recent interview, Zandi said the firm expanded to South Florida to serve two client categories: High-income New Yorkers who have been increasingly audited after moving to Florida full-time or becoming part-time residents, and churches with dwindling congregations and valuable land to spare.

“New York has been losing high-income New Yorkers who are going to Florida to pay zero [state income] tax,” Zandi said. “New York State has been auditing former and part-time residents to recoup the money. A lot of these clients who straddle the divide between New York and Florida also straddle the divide of tax controversy. If we can provide that service, that’s a big value-add for clients down here.”

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A Tenured Professor Who Says He Contracted Long Covid In The Classroom Blames His R1 University, Laterals To New School

Chronicle of Higher Education:  This Is Life-Changing’: What It’s Like to be an Academic With Long Covid:

Gregory T. Cushman is an associate professor of international environmental history at the University of Kansas. He contracted Covid-19 in August 2020 and, since then, has coped with symptoms of long Covid. This is his account of his experience, as told to Megan Zahneis. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)

The first week of classes at the University of Kansas in August 2020, I, beyond a reasonable doubt, contracted Covid in the classroom.

Covid has so many different symptoms associated with it. I especially had low oxygen levels, great difficulty breathing. The worst of all was just this soul-killing, unrelenting fatigue. ...

For academics, our jobs and our lives are premised on our ability to think clearly, to think quickly, to do so in a focused way, to be able to speak, to be able to write. Post-Covid disrupts our focus and our thoughts in ways that are extremely discouraging, because if you don’t have this capacity, you’re done, it’s over. You have to rethink what you’re doing with your life, and I had moments — many moments — when I was fearful that I would have to end my career if this didn’t go away. Then I would have a good day, and have the hope that maybe I’ll be turning the corner. It was always such a tease that way. ...

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Blue J Predicts With 86% Confidence Debt-Equity Decision In Tribune Media

Benjamin Alarie (Osler Chair in Business Law, University of Toronto; CEO, Blue J Legal) & Kathrin Gardhouse (Senior Legal Research Associate, Blue J Legal), The Debt-Equity Distinction and Tribune Media, 175 Tax Notes Fed. 593 (Apr. 25, 2022):

In this article, Alarie and Gardhouse use the Blue J debt-equity predictor to analyze part of the Tax Court’s recent decision in Tribune Media [v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2021-122 (Oct. 26, 2021)]. ...

Common law debt-equity characterization depends on the synthesis of more than a dozen factual and circumstantial elements. In real-world situations, with so many considerations in play, ambiguity is endemic. The threshold challenge for taxpayers, the IRS, and, ultimately, the courts is to determine the most appropriate characterization for a given financing, all things considered.

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An Access And Equity Ranking Of America's 63 Public Law Schools

Christopher L. Mathis (Iowa; Google Scholar), An Access and Equity Ranking of Public Law Schools:

Over the past few decades, several comprehensive ranking systems, including the influential U.S. News and World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings, have emerged to provide useful information to prospective law students seeking to enroll in law school. These ranking systems have defined what is measured as “quality” and what outcomes law schools focus on to gain a better position in the ranking. These rankings fail to measure what many law schools claim to be one of their longstanding goals— diversity, access, and equity.

One of the problematic and shocking reasons U.S. News cites for not including diversity measures in the ranking is that law schools themselves have no consensus on diversity. I counter this argument, asserting that while there may not be widespread consensus—for certain people—on diversity, there is substantial academic scholarship and agreement on the tenets of diversity that ranking enthusiasts can use to design an effective diversity measure. I maintain that any ranking that does not include diversity, access, and equity measures often leave communities of color and their interests in the margins. Therefore, this Article seeks to center the needs of Black and Latinx prospective law students through a new ranking system

Given that public law schools aim to increase racial/ethnic diversity—that is, the number of racial/ethnic minoritized students—because of their institutional missions, the Article provides the first ranking of public law schools on “Access and Equity” measures. It describes ranking law schools based on measurable outcomes related to diversity, access, and equity. This ranking uses twelve access and equity measures that are significant to Black and Latinx law school fit. This “Access and Equity Ranking” is the only ranking to date that will help Black and Latinx students identify which public law schools centers their needs.

The Top 25 law schools under this measure are:

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Blank & Glogower: The Tax Information Gap At The Top

Joshua D. Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) & Ari D. Glogower (Ohio State; Google Scholar), The Tax Information Gap at the Top, 108 Iowa L. Rev. __ (2023):

Tax information reporting is an essential element of tax administration and compliance the United States. When individuals earn wages, accrue interest, or receive Social Security benefits, the Internal Revenue Service almost always knows. In these situations, a third party, such as an employer or a bank, files an information return with both the individual taxpayer and the IRS. Not surprisingly, when income is subject to tax information reporting, tax compliance is extremely high. Despite the power of tax information reporting to maximize the IRS’s ability to collect taxes owed, these rules also contain significant gaps where limited or no information reporting is required. Often the beneficiaries are high-income and wealthy taxpayers (high-end taxpayers) who earn their income in situations where no third party files information reports with the IRS. Meanwhile, most wage earners are subject to tax information reporting by their employers.

This Article offers a new theory for why the U.S. tax information reporting regime treats high-end taxpayers differently from other taxpayers and offers recommendations for closing gaps in the current rules.

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Hamilton & Bilionis: Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals

Neil W. Hamilton (St. Thomas; Google Scholar) & Louis D. Bilionis (Cincinnati), Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals (Cambridge University Press 2022):

Law schools currently do an excellent job of helping students to 'think like a lawyer,' but empirical data show that clients, legal employers, and the legal system need students to develop a wider range of competencies. This book helps legal educators to understand these competencies and provides practical ways to build them into a law school curriculum. Based on recommendations from the American Bar Association, the American Association of Law Schools, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, it will equip students with the skills they need not only to think but to act and feel like a lawyer. With this proposed model, students will internalize the need for professional development toward excellence, their responsibility to others, a client-centered approach to problem solving, and strong well-being practices. These four goals constitute a lawyer's professional identity, and this book empowers legal educators to foster each student's development of a professional identity that leads to a gratifying career that serves society well. This title is Open Access.

Reviews:

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WSJ: To Get Your Tax Records From The IRS, Taxpayers Still Have To Turn Over Sensitive Personal Info To Outside Vendor

Following up on my previous posts (linked below):  Wall Street Journal Tax Report, They’re Your IRS Records. Getting Them Means Giving Up Privacy.:

Tax Day 2022 has come and gone, but this year’s filing season brought an unpleasant surprise for many Americans that’s still here: People who want online access to their tax records at the Internal Revenue Service have to turn over sensitive personal information to an outside company to get them. ...

Over the last decade, the IRS has had severe problems with its own systems that limited access for many taxpayers, so last year it turned to an outside vendor, ID.me, to verify identities. ID.me, which originated to help military families access benefits, is based in McLean, Va. It now provides online ID verification services to 10 federal agencies and 30 states. Its contract with the IRS is for up to $86.8 million.

Now, taxpayers who want to view their IRS records online must submit copies of driver’s licenses, Social Security cards and other documents to ID.me as proof of identity.

ID.me says that due to federal requirements, applicants must also provide a certain type of facial “selfie” or else have an online video interview with a representative for comparison with photo IDs.

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ABA Releases New Bar Pass Data By Race, Ethnicity, Gender

Press Release, ABA Releases New Report on Bar Pass Data by Race, Ethnicity, Gender:

The Managing Director’s Office of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar released today a new set of bar pass data for American Bar Association-approved law schools that provides national “ultimate” and first-time percentage pass rates based on race, ethnicity and gender.

The charts, which are incorporated into the section’s Legal Education Statistics, include aggregate data in nine different ethnicity categories for information collected in 2021 and 2022 broken down by gender. The data was reported to the ABA by the 196 law schools accepting new students in their ABA Standard 509 questionnaire, which covers about a dozen categories including employment and bar passage outcomes among other areas.

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Call For Volunteers: State Tax Administration Survey

Seeking Volunteers: State Tax Administration Survey:

Under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Center for Taxpayer Rights has developed a questionnaire of state tax administration practices and procedures to better understand how taxpayer rights are protected under state law. The questionnaire gathers information relating to income tax (where applicable), property tax, sales tax, and any other statewide taxes. The questions involve laws related to Assessment, Appeals, Collection, and Litigation. Volunteers are asked to provide an explanation of applicable state law as well as a citation when possible. Once the information is collected, the Center will make recommendations for the adoption of practices shown to work well and will identify areas of deficiency in taxpayer protections and advocate for change where taxpayer rights are in jeopardy.  The Center plans to hold a Reimagining Tax Administration workshop in the fall of 2022 to discuss the survey findings and recommendations. More information can be found here.

The Center is seeking volunteers for the following states:

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AccessLex Institute 2022 Legal Education Data Deck

AccessLex Institute, 2022 Legal Education Data Deck:

The 2022 Legal Education Data Deck utilizes datasets made publicly available by third parties to offer a snapshot of certain trends organized around the three guiding principles of AccessLex Institute’s research agenda: access, affordability and value in legal education. This is a living document that is updated periodically — AccessLex welcomes comments, criticisms and suggestions in order to make this as useful a tool as possible for all those we serve.

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Soled & Thomas: AI, Taxation, And Valuation

Jay A. Soled (Rutgers; Google Scholar) & Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina; Google Scholar), AI, Taxation, and Valuation, 108 Iowa L. Rev. __ (2023):

Virtually every tax system relies upon accurate asset valuations. In some cases, this is an easy identification exercise, and the exact fair market value of an asset is readily ascertainable. Often, however, the reverse is true, and ascertaining an asset’s fair market value yields, at best, a numerical range of possible outcomes. Taxpayers commonly capitalize upon this uncertainty in their reporting practices, such that tax compliance lags and the IRS has a difficult time fulfilling its oversight responsibilities. As a by-product of this dynamic, the Treasury suffers.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, In Recently Released Data, ABA Parses Out Bar Passage Rates By Race, Ethnicity and Gender
• ABA Journal, After Spike Up in 2021, MPRE Mean Scaled Score Slightly Decreases
• ABA Journal, One-time Jailhouse Lawyer Creates Legal Jobs Program for the Formerly Incarcerated
• ABA Journal, After 20 Tries, Law Grad Passes the Bar but Is Barred From Law Practice in Massachusetts
• ABA Journal, If You Pass the Bar on First Attempt and Want to be a Lawyer, You're Likely to get Hired, 2021 Grads Say
• ABA Journal, Numbers Show Slight Increase in Two-Year Bar Pass Rates
• ABA Journal, What is in the Audio That Led Prosecutors to Charge Dentist in Law Prof’s Murder?
• Above the Law, The Law Schools With The Highest LSAT Scores (2021)

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Daniel Hemel Leaves Chicago For NYU

After visiting at NYU for the 2021-22 academic year, Daniel Hemel (Chicago; Google Scholar) has accepted a tenured position at NYU. Daniel's recent scholarship includes:

• "Regulation and Redistribution with Lives in the Balance," __ University of Chicago Law Review __ (2022) (forthcoming). ssrn
• "The Federalist Safeguards of Progressive Taxation," 93 New York University Law Review __ (forthcoming). ssrn
• "Trademark Law Pluralism," 88 University of Chicago Law Review 1025 (2021) (with Lisa L. Ouellette). ssrn www
• "Beyond the Dignity of Work Comment on M. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit," 1 American Journal of Law and Equality 33 (2021). www
• "What Role Should Governments Play in Setting Rewards for Medical Innovation?," 11 Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment law 1 (2021) (with Michael Abramowicz & Bhaven Sampat).
• "The Behavioral Elasticity of Tax Revenue," 13 Journal of Legal Analysis 381 (2021) (with David A. Weisbach). www
• "Can Structural Changes Fix the Supreme Court?," 35 Journal Of Economic Perspectives 119 (2021). www
• "Taxing Buybacks," 38 Yale Journal on Regulation 246 (2021) (with Gregg D. Polsky). www
• "Four Futures for U.S. Pandemic Policy," 2021 University of Chicago Legal Forum 145 (2021). www
• "The Architecture of a Basic Income," 87 University of Chicago Law Review 625 (2020) (with Miranda P. Fleischer). www

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WSJ: Annual Reviews And OKRs Are A Terrible Way To Evaluate Employees

Wall Street Journal:  Annual Reviews Are a Terrible Way to Evaluate Employees, by Marcus Buckingham (Author, Love + Work: How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life (Harvard Business Review Press 2022)):

Gallup data from the 2020 version of their continuing workplace research reveal that 86% of employees don’t think their annual review is accurate. In a 2018 Adobe Inc. study of a representative sample of 1,500 office workers, 22% reported that they’d even burst into tears during their review.

For millions, the annual performance review is akin to going to a bad dentist: Before you go, you dread it; while you’re there, it’s painful; after it’s done, nothing’s fixed. And yet the annual review remains a reality for most workers. ...

The failings of the annual performance review fall into three broad buckets:

They are too infrequent.
Goals set at the beginning of the year are irrelevant by the third week of the year. Data from ADP’s human-resources systems reveal that, after inputting their goals, fewer than 4% of people go back and check their goals even once during the year. In the real world, your actual work has precious little to do with your goals. Work happens in a continuing flow, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week. ...

They are dehumanizing. ...

They are irrelevant to real-world performance.
Each worker is unique in what they love and loathe about their work. Even those who excel at the very same job excel differently—excellence in any job is idiosyncratic. Research from the ADP Research Institute’s series of global studies of more than 50,000 workers from 27 countries reveals that workers who report they find love in what they do, and are good at it, are far more likely to be engaged, resilient, and experience less stress on the job, regardless of what their job is. They are far less likely to express an intent to leave, or even to be actively interviewing for a new job. ...

The annual review should be dead, a relic of MBO’s, KRA’s, OKR’s and all those falsely precise acronyms spawned in the Jack Welchian 80s and Andy Grovian 90s. But they aren’t. They live on—still today, OKR’s lurk inside the performance appraisals at many Silicon Valley tech giants. And they are among the reasons so many companies will wonder why they can’t keep their talent. Why one day ... sound, hardworking, well-intentioned people suddenly up and quit.

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Lesson From The Tax Court: Distinguishing Employees From Independent Contractors

Pro Publica has proudly proclaimed that “If You’re Getting a W-2, You’re a Sucker.”  I know lots of workers who would strongly disagree.  For them, being a W-2 worker (a/k/a “employee”) is far more beneficial than their realistic alternative, which is being a 1099 worker (a/k/a “independent contractor”).  The Pro-Publica story was channeling this Brookings Institution study which noted how business owners can often hide their income but workers cannot because their employers rat them out with W-2s.

But most workers have no realistic choice.  Just ask your next Uber or Lyft driver.  For them, as for many others in various industries—from child-care to health-care to landscaping and construction—the choice is not whether or not to hide income.  Their choice is only whether their income gets reported to the IRS on a Form W-2 or a Form 1099.  The upside of being an employee is lower employment taxes and eligibility for unemployment benefits.  The potential downside is no §199A and no ability to deduct unreimbursed job expenses, given the current nastiness codified in §67(g).

And the choice of status is often on the employer.  Employers must decide whether and when to treat their workers as employees or as independent contractors.  Today’s lesson shows how they might be on the hook if they make the wrong classification.  Pediatric Impressions Home Health, Inc. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2022-35 (Apr. 12, 2022) (Judge Greaves), teaches us how Tax Court distinguishes employees from independent contracts.  It also shows us a potential safe harbor that employers can use to escape the unpaid obligations if it turns out they erroneously classified employees as independent contractors.  Details below the fold.

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Tax Policy Center Hosts Virtual Conference Today On Wealth Taxation In Defense Of Equal Citizenship

The Tax Policy Center hosts a virtual conference on Wealth Taxation in Defense of Equal Citizenship today at 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. EDT (registration):

Wealth inequality is often discussed in terms of its economic effects rather than its political implications. But money is a form of power, and the wealthy exert an outsized influence on politics. Wealth taxation has the potential, therefore, not only to reduce the concentration of economic power in America, but to strengthen democracy itself. On Monday, May 2, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center will host an event considering wealth taxation as a tool of democratic reform. During the live event, viewers can submit questions via email to events@brookings.edu or on Twitter using #WealthTax.

Speakers:

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Brown & Dau-Schmidt: Racial And Ethnic Ancestry Of The Nation’s Black Law Students
• Report On Tax Implications Of Cryptocurrency And Other Fungible Digital Assets
• WSJ: Jones Day Finds USC Dean Intentionally Reported Fale Data To U.S. News To Goose Its Ranking

Sunday:

• WSJ Op-Ed: How God Works — The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion
• Christian Legal Society Members Sue Law School For Punishing Them For Expressing Their Religious Beliefs
• The Chosen At Pepperdine Caruso Law
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

WSJ Op-Ed: How God Works — The Science Behind The Benefits Of Religion

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  Does Religion Make People More Ethical?, by David DeSteno (Northeastern; Google Scholar; Author, How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion (2021)):

[W]hen it comes to morality, the power of religion is more in the doing than in the believing. Studies of religion and health show that identifying with a religion—saying you believe in God or going to worship once a year on Easter or Yom Kippur—means very little. Epidemiological research shows that it is people who live their faith, regularly going to services and engaging in their religion’s rituals, who tend to live longer, healthier and happier lives.

In most faiths, being religious isn’t just defined by a creed but by rituals and practices that permeate daily life. When we pray and sing together, listen to readings from scripture, or give offerings and blessings of thanks to God, our minds and bodies aren’t passive. They’re subtly being nudged toward virtue.

Take giving to charity. A large-scale 2017 study by Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy [Special Report on Giving to Religion] showed that in the U.S., 62% of religiously active households gave to charity, with an average donation of $1,590. By contrast, only 46% of nonreligious households give, with an average donation of $695. And increased attendance at religious services is associated with increased generosity.  ...

[W]hen people feel gratitude, elevation and compassion more frequently, they become more moral in general. While this might seem at odds with the commonly held view that qualities like honesty or generosity are stable personality traits, scientists now recognize that morality is really more of a moment-to-moment balancing act between competing motives. From about the age of 7 onward, children spend a good deal of time learning how to exert self-control so they can inhibit their less-than-noble desires.

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Christian Legal Society Members Sue Law School For Punishing Them For Expressing Their Religious Beliefs

Alliance Defending Freedom, Idaho Law Students File Suit After University Punishes Them For Their Religious Beliefs:

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing three Christian law students filed suit Monday against University of Idaho officials for violating the students’ First Amendment rights by punishing them because of the religious content and viewpoint of their speech.

“Students of all religious and ideological stripes must be free to discuss and debate the important issues of our day, especially law students who are preparing for a career that requires civil dialogue among differing viewpoints,” said ADF Legal Counsel Michael Ross. “Yet the University of Idaho is shutting down Peter, Mark, and Ryan because of their religious beliefs. This is illegal behavior from any government official, and we urge the university officials to right their discriminatory actions immediately.”

Peter Perlot, Mark Miller, and Ryan Alexander are members of the Christian Legal Society chapter at the University of Idaho. When Perlot and Miller joined most of the other members of CLS at a “moment of community” gathering to condemn a discriminatory slur written at another campus, a law student approached them to ask why CLS requires its officers to affirm the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Miller respectfully explained that the chapter requires this because it is the only view of marriage and sexuality affirmed in the Bible.

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