Davis: Commodification, Precarity, And Identity—A Review Of Bridget Crawford’s Taxing Sugar Babies

Tessa Davis (South Carolina), Commodification, Precarity, and Identity: A Review of Professor Bridget Crawford’s Taxing Sugar Babies, 109 Minn. L. Rev. Headnotes 59 (2025):

Early in her article, Taxing Sugar Babies, Professor Crawford nudges the reader to bring any preconceived notions or biases to the forefront of her mind. She writes: In many ways, sugaring is simply a modern twist on relationships that have existed in one form or another for centuries, if not millennia. Paid companionate, non-sexual relationships are amply documented throughout history. Indeed, the compensated female companion is a well-known trope in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English novels. Paid companionate relationships are not merely vestiges of the past, either. In modern times, there are compensated companions for older adults or persons with disabilities, and even paid online “friends” . . . . Likewise, paid companionate relationships with a sexual component have an equally long and reported history. . . . 

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Seattle Symposium: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions

EPOCH 2023 Symposium, Going Forward: The Role of Affirmative Action, Race, and Diversity in University Admissions and the Broader Construction of Society, 47 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1003-1425 (2024):

• Steven W. Bender (Seattle), Foreword, 47 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1003 (2024)
• Margaret E. Montoya (New Mexico; Google Scholar), Memories of an Affirmative Action Activist, 47 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1029 (2024)
• Francisco Valdes (Miami), Defeat Fascism, Transform Democracy: Mapping Academic Resources, Reframing the Fundamentals, and Organizing for Collective Actions, 47 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1057 (2024)
• Meera E. Deo (Southwestern; Google Scholar), After Affirmative Action, 47 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1231 (2024)
• Stella Emery Santana (Indiana-McKinney), We Shall Overcome: The Evolution of Quotas in the Land of the Free and the Home of Samba, 47 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1243 (2024)
• Anthony E. Varona (Seattle), Michèle Alexandre (Dean, Loyola-Chicago), Michael J. Kaufman (Santa Clara) & Madeleine M. Landrieu (Loyola-New Orleans), Panel Discussion: Religious Freedom and Diversity Missions: Insights from Jesuit Law Deans, 47 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1247 (2024)

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SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly ranking of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database.  Here is the new list (through May 1, 2025) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

		All-Time			Recent
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	246,348	1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	13,864
2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	139,356	2	Jonathan Choi (USC)	10,461
3	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	132,178	3	Zachary Liscow (Yale)	7,361
4	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	131,087	4	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	5,962
5	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	130,038	5	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	5,015
6	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	123,949	6	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	4,917
7	David Kamin (NYU)	116,647	7	Kristin Hickman (Minnesota)	4,511
8	Cliff Fleming (BYU)	110,139	8	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	4,429
9	Ari Glogower (Northwestern)	106,799	9	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	4,014
10	Manoj Viswanathan (UC-SF)	105,961	10	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	3,562
11	Rebecca Kysar (Fordham)	105,732	11	David Weisbach (Chicago)	3,347
12	Mitchell Kane (NYU)	102,390	12	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	3,329
13	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	57,794	13	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	3,312
14	Michael Simkovic (USC)	52,800	14	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	3,162
15	Jonathan Choi (USC)	48,580	15	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	3,145
16	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	47,203	16	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	3,054
17	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	44,709	17	Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.)	2,970
18	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	43,145	18	Ed Fox (Michigan)	2,822
19	Richard Ainsworth (Boston Univ.)	41,905	19	Richard Pomp (Connecticut)	2,710
20	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	38,174	20	Kyle Rozema (Northwestern)	2,472
21	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	38,104	21	Michael Simkovic (USC)	2,436
22	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	36,664	22	Brian Galle (Georgetown)	2,422
23	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	35,748	23	Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo)	2,369
24	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	34,949	24	Steve R. Johnson (Florida State)	2,278
25	Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)	32,336	25	Edward McCaffery (USC)	2,206

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U.S. News Rankings Czar Bob Morse Retires

U.S. News, Bob Morse Retires:

He’s known as the godfather of college rankings, the man behind the curtain of the U.S. News annual Best Colleges guide for almost 40 years.

But no more. The man the Washington Post called “one of the most powerful wonks in the country," has decided it’s time to cease wonking. Robert Morse, known to all as Bob, is retiring after a 49-year career at U.S. News & World Report that saw him elevate a casual reputation survey among a handful of college presidents into a journalistic enterprise providing tens of millions of prospective college students transparency into the formerly shrouded world of higher education. In the process, Morse expanded the universe of college choices beyond the east coast elite, making readers aware of many public and lesser-known private schools on the list of 1,500 institutions.

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A Student's Perspective On The AI Revolution In Law School

ABA Journal Op-Ed:  Navigating the AI Revolution in Law School: Lessons From the Front Lines, by Austin Gergen (J.D. 2025, Tennessee):

As a third-year law student, I’ve had a front-row seat to the artificial intelligence revolution in the legal field. This experience has helped me integrate AI into my research, writing and studying.

With tools like ChatGPT, Lexis+ AI and locally hosted large language models, law students have ample opportunities to embrace this revolution, rather than resist it. ...

One of AI’s greatest advantages is its ability to enhance the early stages of legal research. These tools can rapidly analyze and summarize vast amounts of data and, depending on the tool, provide citations to legal sources or newspapers that I can use as a springboard for further research. This capability has streamlined my research process, enabling me to focus more on analysis and application, rather than finding the rule that applies to a specific case. ...

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the 2025 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in Chicago:

Local Governments and Tax Benefits

 As state governments think about imposing tax within their own borders they are faced with the additional challenges of balancing their state-level taxes with the U.S. federal tax. This same balance also arises in other contexts, such as the balance between national and EU tax law. The papers in this panel explore what this balancing process looks like in various contexts, and attempts to address some of the significant challenges that can arise as a result.

• Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) (chair/discussant)
• Heather Field (UC Law-SF; Google Scholar), Selling Tax Benefits
• Borbala Kolozs, Taxation and Animals
• Richard Winchester (Brooklyn), A Tax Policing Paradox
• Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar), Fiscal Autonomy in Subnational Taxation

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Clarke & Kopczuk: Measuring Income And Income Inequality

Conor Clarke (Washington University; Google Scholar) & Wojciech Kopczuk (Columbia; Google Scholar), Measuring Income and Income Inequality, 39 J. Econ. Persp. 103 (2025):

Income inequality is important, but attempts to measure it arrive at strikingly different conclusions. Why? We use recent disputes over measuring United States income inequality to return to first principles about both the income concept and inequality measurement. We emphasize two broad points. First, no measure of the income distribution is truly comprehensive, or could attempt to be comprehensive without making controversial choices. We document the practical and conceptual problems that the standard ideal—comprehensive Haig-Simons income—raises. Second, much of the controversy in this area turns on the many tradeoffs between starting with individual tax data versus more expansive income concepts. 

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Symposium: Law School 101—An Exploration Of Legal Pedagogy

Symposium, Law School 101: An Exploration Of Legal Pedagogy, 102 U. Detroit Mercy L. Rev. 1-208 (2024) (Part 2): 

• Mary Lu Bilek (Former Dean, UMass & CUNY), Claudia Angelos (NYU), Joan W. Howarth (UNLV; Google Scholar) & Deborah Jones Merritt (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Langdell's Subjects, 102 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 1 (2024)
• Courtney A. Griffin (Detroit Mercy), Stories of Those Untold: Identifying and Overcoming Obstacles of Black Women Pursuing Legal Education, 102 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 29 (2024)
• Joseph A. Custer (Case Western), Cancel Culture and Censorship Effects Before and After the Introduction of Social Media, 102 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 51 (2024)
• Amelia J. Uelmen (Georgetown), Religious Lawyering in a Polarized Society, 102 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 99 (2024)

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Morrow: Tax On Tips

Rebecca Morrow (Wake Forest; Google Scholar), Tax on Tips, 44 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. ___ (2026):

Carol is 38 years old, a single parent to an 18-year-old child, and works full-time as a restaurant server. Her employer pays her $2.13 per hour, which is legal according to federal law and the laws of Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. She also earns tips, which bring her wages up to $7.25 per hour. Her tips might have brought her wages above the $7.25 federal minimum wage, but when Carol makes more than $5.12 in hourly tips, her employer takes the excess and distributes it among Carol’s co-workers. Recently both Democrats and Republicans have pledged to help tipped workers by exempting tips from the federal income tax. President Trump promises to sign a “no tax on tips” proposal into law soon. The public supports this proposal, assuming it will help hard-working, low-paid servers like Carol.

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Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College. What Happens When They Get To Law School?

New York Magazine, Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College:

ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.

Chungin “Roy” Lee stepped onto Columbia University’s campus this past fall and, by his own admission, proceeded to use generative artificial intelligence to cheat on nearly every assignment. As a computer-science major, he depended on AI for his introductory programming classes: “I’d just dump the prompt into ChatGPT and hand in whatever it spat out.” By his rough math, AI wrote 80 percent of every essay he turned in. “At the end, I’d put on the finishing touches. I’d just insert 20 percent of my humanity, my voice, into it,” Lee told me recently.

Lee was born in South Korea and grew up outside Atlanta, where his parents run a college-prep consulting business. He said he was admitted to Harvard early in his senior year of high school, but the university rescinded its offer after he was suspended for sneaking out during an overnight field trip before graduation. A year later, he applied to 26 schools; he didn’t get into any of them. So he spent the next year at a community college, before transferring to Columbia. (His personal essay, which turned his winding road to higher education into a parable for his ambition to build companies, was written with help from ChatGPT.) When he started at Columbia as a sophomore this past September, he didn’t worry much about academics or his GPA. “Most assignments in college are not relevant,” he told me. “They’re hackable by AI, and I just had no interest in doing them.” While other new students fretted over the university’s rigorous core curriculum, described by the school as “intellectually expansive” and “personally transformative,” Lee used AI to breeze through with minimal effort. When I asked him why he had gone through so much trouble to get to an Ivy League university only to off-load all of the learning to a robot, he said, “It’s the best place to meet your co-founder and your wife.” ...

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How Some Law Schools Are Training Students In Generative AI

ABA Journal, Class Is in Session: How Some Law Schools Are Training Students in Generative AI:

After initially taking a more skeptical approach following the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022, law schools are warming up to using artificial intelligence in curriculum and clinics.

As more AI software is made available to law schools and students, the moment of law schools watching and waiting is over. More options are emerging for AI coursework that not only examines the ethical uses of AI but also offers hands-on experiences that range from practicing contract negotiations and court appearances via AI-generated simulators to developing systems to handle divorce and end-of-life documents in legal clinics.

“Now is when the rubber meets the road,” says Daniel W. Linna, the law and technology initiatives director at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. “We’ve got to take some of these experiments and turn them into substantive changes in our courses; our curricula; and, in the case of clinics and legal services delivery, real tools with measurable results.”

The stakes for aspiring lawyers are high. As AI handles much of the work young associates do, the pressure is on to train future lawyers to quickly level up, says Megan Ma, executive director of Stanford Law School’s Legal Innovation through Frontier Technology Lab.

“How do we get them to the level of a senior lawyer and learn the skills of issue-spotting?” she asks.

At many law schools, the answer is offering more AI-centric opportunities. Last year, 55% of schools responding to the ABA Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence’s AI and Legal Education Survey reported having classes dedicated to AI; 32% offered formal opportunities to use AI via interdisciplinary arrangements with their university; and 83% reported opportunities, like clinics, where students could learn to use AI tools. The survey was sent to 200 law school deans via email, and 29 deans or faculty members responded.

Law Schools featured in the remainder of the article:

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Kahn: The Service’s Overgenerous Tax Treatment Of Crowdfunding

Jeffrey H. Kahn (Florida State), The Service’s Overgenerous Tax Treatment of Crowdfunding, 46 Cardozo L. Rev. De-Novo 57 (2025):

The Internal Revenue Service released a fact sheet that defines crowdfunding as a method to raise money on websites by soliciting contributions from a large number of people. This article considers how crowdfunding is treated for tax purposes and argues that, contrary to the fact sheet’s determination, all donations collected by commercial websites should be income to the recipient.

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Columbia Journal Of Tax Law Publishes New Issue

The Columbia Journal of Tax Law has published a new issue (Vol. 16, No. 2 (Spring 2025)):

• Eric Baudry (Michigan), The Tax Redistribution Gap, 16 Colum. J. Tax L. 86 (2025)
• Jeffrey H. Kahn (Florida State) & Rebecca Roman (Gibson Dunn, Dallas), The Flip and Flop of Taxing Alimony, 16 Colum. J. Tax L. 131 (2025)

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Preparing Law Students For The Artificial Intelligence Era

Samantha A. Moppett (Suffolk), Preparing Students for the Artificial Intelligence Era: The Crucial Role of Critical Thinking Skills, 52 Mitchell Hamline L. Rev. __ (2025):

As artificial intelligence transforms the legal profession, the role of critical thinking skills among legal professionals becomes increasingly vital. This Article argues that while AI will automate many routine legal tasks, successful legal practice in the AI era will require lawyers to possess robust critical thinking abilities to effectively evaluate AI outputs, develop strategic solutions, and handle complex analytical work that AI cannot replicate. However, at this crucial juncture, evidence suggests a significant deficit in critical thinking skills among incoming law students. This deficit poses particular challenges as the legal profession increasingly integrates generative AI tools that can handle routine legal tasks but require human oversight and evaluation.

This Article examines the intersection of AI technology, critical thinking skills, and legal education. It begins by analyzing the current state of AI in legal practice, with particular attention to generative AI's capabilities and limitations. The Article then explores the nature of critical thinking, including both its cognitive skills and dispositional components, and explains why these skills are essential for legal practice in the AI era.

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Into The Sunset: Divorcing Families Need Their Slice Of The TCJA Reversions

John C. McDonald (J.D. 2025, BYU), Note, Into the Sunset: Divorcing Families Need Their Slice of the TCJA Reversions, 50 BYU L. Rev. 531 (2024):

On its path to sufficiently offsetting its major cut to the corporate income tax rate in 2017, Congress turned to a surprising source for funds: the alimony support payments of recently divorced families. Alimony’s inclusion/deduction regime in §§ 71 and 215 of the Code allowed divorcing couples to reach mutually beneficial divorce agreements for over half a century until it was unceremoniously repealed by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 with a striking lack of satisfying legislative justifications. This Note suggests that in evaluating the impact of the repeal, Congress and others have failed to consider an important piece in the puzzle: the marriage bonus. The marriage bonus, which rewards some couples with better results for filing jointly rather than separately, scaled proportionally with the pre- TCJA alimony subsidy and resulted in most couples receiving inferior tax treatment by choosing to divorce. Now, after the repeal of the subsidy, couples have an even worse result when they choose to separate.

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Yellen: The ABA Standards And Regulatory Modesty

Following up on Friday's post, Opposition Grows To ABA's Proposal To Double The Experiential Learning Accreditation Requirement:  David Yellen (former Dean, Miami), The ABA Standards and Regulatory Modesty:

I’d like to add a few thoughts to Dan Rodriguez’s recent posts about the accreditation work of the Council of the ABA Section on Legal Education.  Like Dan, I have viewed calls for the replacement of the Council as law school accreditor as misguided.  As Barry Currier argues compellingly, having a national “approver” for bar licensing purposes is essential.  Despite what I view as a very mixed record by the Council, I have no reason to think that a newly constituted entity would represent a significant improvement, to say nothing of the enormous transition costs involved. And I certainly have no confidence in the Trump Administration’s approach to accreditation “reform”.

That said, some of the Council’s recent actions makes defending it difficult. Derek Muller has explored some of the Council’s overreach. Most notably, the Council has sent out for notice and comment two proposals that, taken together, would represent the most radical intrusion into the operation of law schools that I can recall. One is a proposal to double the number of required experiential learning credits from 6 to 12. The other is to mandate tenure or tenure-like protections for all full time law faculty, including clinical faculty, legal writing faculty and academic support/bar preparation instructors. ...

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NY Times: Professors Are Using ChatGPT. Students Aren’t Happy About It

New York Times, The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It:

In February, Ella Stapleton, then a senior at Northeastern University, was reviewing lecture notes from her organizational behavior class when she noticed something odd. Was that a query to ChatGPT from her professor?

Halfway through the document, which her business professor had made for a lesson on models of leadership, was an instruction to ChatGPT to “expand on all areas. Be more detailed and specific.” It was followed by a list of positive and negative leadership traits, each with a prosaic definition and a bullet-pointed example. ...

Ms. Stapleton decided to do some digging. She reviewed her professor’s slide presentations and discovered other telltale signs of A.I.: distorted text, photos of office workers with extraneous body parts and egregious misspellings.

She was not happy. Given the school’s cost and reputation, she expected a top-tier education. This course was required for her business minor; its syllabus forbade “academically dishonest activities,” including the unauthorized use of artificial intelligence or chatbots.

“He’s telling us not to use it, and then he’s using it himself,” she said.

Ms. Stapleton filed a formal complaint with Northeastern’s business school, citing the undisclosed use of A.I. as well as other issues she had with his teaching style, and requested reimbursement of tuition for that class. As a quarter of the total bill for the semester, that would be more than $8,000.

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Morse: Taxpayer Privacy Protections—Restrictions And Remedies For Releasing Return Information

Edward A. Morse (Creighton; Google Scholar), Taxpayer Privacy Protections: Restrictions and Remedies for Releasing Return Information, 12 Belmont L. Rev. ___ (2025): 

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal framework governing taxpayer privacy in the United States, with a focus on Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code. Tracing the historical evolution of privacy protections from early 20th-century political misuse to the present, the article explains how legislative reforms have aimed to limit unauthorized access to tax return information. Morse critically examines the statutory and regulatory mechanisms that seek to protect sensitive taxpayer data—including criminal sanctions, civil remedies, and administrative safeguards—and assesses their efficacy. Particular attention is given to recent controversies involving breaches by IRS contractors and data skimming by third-party tax software providers, highlighting gaps in enforcement and legal redress. The article ultimately argues that while formal rules have improved, taxpayer privacy protections have not kept pace with technological and political developments, leaving individuals vulnerable to misuse of their financial data and underscoring the need for reform.

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Columbia Journal Of Tax Law Publishes New Issue

The Columbia Journal of Tax Law has published a new issue (Vol. 16, No. 1 (Winter 2024)):

• Sloan G. Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar), The Realization Rule as a Legal Standard, 16 Colum. J. Tax L. 1 (2024) (reviewed by David Elkins (Netanya, Google Scholar) here) 

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, ABA Objects To Proposed Changes In Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program
• ABA Journal, Nominations For 2025-2026 Term Announced By ABA Legal Ed Section
• ABA Journal, Pipeline Internship Program Used By Prestigious Law Firms Discriminates Based On Race, Group Contends
• ABA Journal, Political Climate Motivates PreLaw Students To Apply, New Kaplan Survey Shows
• ABA Journal, Provisional Licenses Considered As Another California Bar Exam Remedy
• ABA Journal, Should Law Schools Have More Hands-On Learning Requirements?
• American Lawyer, Legal Blindness Will Not Stop This Incoming Ropes & Gray Associate
• Stephen Carter (Yale), The NYU Graduation Speech Controversy Isn’t New

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Escajeda: Taylor Swift, Tortured Poets, And The Tax Code's Frankenstein

Hilary G. Escajeda (Mississippi College; Google Scholar), Taylor Swift, Tortured Poets, and the Tax Code's Frankenstein, 125 Colum. L. Rev. F. 75 (2025):

Taylor Swift’s songs inspire generations of fans to sing and dance about love and to “shake . . . off” heartbreak. Swift’s hard-earned “reputation” for being a savvy music mogul inspires other creative spirits to be “fearless” in their artistic endeavors. But unless these artists are songwriters and musicians, they should keep their “eyes open” when selling their works, as they may see “red” when they discover their tax rates.

The simple fact is that a taxpayer’s financial ability to live out their “wildest dreams” may turn on their chosen artistic medium. Notably, the Internal Revenue Code taxes the sale of poems differently than the sale of songs. As a result, in most cases, poets will be subject to ordinary income tax rates, while songwriters may be eligible for preferential capital gains treatment.

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Susman Godfrey Law Firm Expands DEI Scholarships To Students Of Color Amid Trump Fight

Law360, Susman Godfrey Expands DEI Scholarships Amid Trump Fight:

Susman Godfrey LLP announced Friday that the firm has expanded a scholarship program for law students of color to a total of $100,000 — up from $70,000 the firm handed out last year — amid criticism from the Trump administration that the prizes constitute racial discrimination as the firm battles the government over an executive order targeting it.

The firm announced that it had raised the Susman Godfrey Prize from $3,500 to $4,000 as well as increased the number of recipients from 20 to 25 this year. The program, which started in 2021, awards the prize to first- and second-year law students of color for academic and overall achievement. ...

The announcement comes as the firm is suing the Trump administration over his executive order issued April 9 that revoked security clearances the firm's attorneys had and ended contracts with the firm, among other measures. The order also accused the firm of racial discrimination.

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ABA Legal Ed Council Releases Report On Law Schools With Distance Education J.D. Programs

Report on Distance Education J.D. Programs Offered by ABA-Approved Law Schools (Feb. 2025):

Fall 2024 was the first time the Council required all law schools with an ABA-acquiesced in distance education (“DE”) J.D. program to submit their annual reports through a new section of the Annual Questionnaire. Prior to 2024, law schools fulfilled their annual reporting requirement by submitting individual narrative reports. As of January 2025, nineteen law schools have received acquiescence pursuant to Standard 105(a)(12)(i)[1] to offer a distance education J.D. program. Seventeen2 of these law schools were required to submit an annual report on the status of their program by January 15, 2025. This report summarizes the information reported by these seventeen law schools.

A. Makeup of Distance Education Programs

Of the seventeen reporting law schools, five operate their distance education J.D. programs fully online. Twelve programs offer hybrid learning models. Fifteen offer part-time only. None of the programs offer only full-time. Two law schools offer distance education programs with both part-time and full-time options. Two law schools offer optional residential components in their otherwise fully online part-time programs.

The report also includes data on:

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Tax Profs Brant Hellwig And Daniel Hemel Receive 2025 NYU Teaching Awards

NYU Law Announces 2025 Teaching Award Recipients: 

Richard Brooks, Brant Hellwig LLM ’00, and Daniel Hemel have been named this year’s recipients of the NYU Law Teaching Award, which recognizes faculty members who have made outstanding contributions to student learning and engagement.

Each year, NYU Law solicits nominations from students and faculty for the award based on criteria that include extraordinary commitment to teaching, inclusive pedagogical approaches, student engagement in critical thinking, mentorship, curriculum development, and length of service. These awards represent the highest recognition of teaching excellence at NYU Law. ...

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• SALT Workaround Used By Doctors, Lawyers Axed In GOP Tax Bill
• California Bar Cops To Multiple Scoring Errors On Disastrous February Bar Exam; Third Party Will Do A Comprehensive Review
• Survey: Political Climate And Trump's Election Are Driving Law School Applicant Surge
• Repealing The Estate Tax Could Create Headaches For The Rich And Worsen Inequality

Sunday:

• The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein
• Work And The Meaning Of Life
• Religious Lawyering In A Polarized Society
• NY Times: Yeshiva University Reverses Itself And Bans LGBTQ Club
• President Trump Names Three Professors To Religious Liberty Commission's Advisory Board Of Legal Experts
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

The Spiritual Journey Of Albert Einstein

Wall Street Journal Book Review:  Einstein’s Sense of Awe, by Andrew Crumey (Author, Beethoven's Assassins (2024)) (Reviewing Kieran Fox (UC-San Francisco), I Am a Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein (2025); and Diana Kormos Buchwald (Einstein Papers Project) & Michael D. Gordin (Princeton), Free Creations of the Human Mind: The Worlds of Albert Einstein (2025)):

When asked his view of religion, Albert Einstein often invoked a 17th-century Dutch philosopher. “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” Einstein told a New York rabbi in 1929. What exactly he meant by that has been debated ever since.

In “I Am a Part of Infinity,” Kieran Fox, a physician-scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, argues that Einstein’s ideas on religion “have always been approached in the wrong way.” The author claims that Einstein in fact wished to found a “cosmic religion” whose “mandate and meaning” was to remind us “that we embodied Infinity.” Spinoza, Mr. Fox suggests, was but one of many “radical geniuses who anticipated and inspired” the idea. These are bold claims—and I am not convinced. ...

Einstein’s message to Rabbi Goldstein was reported in the New York Times on April 25, 1929. When asked to expand on his views, the physicist sent an essay, which would be published in the Times’s Sunday magazine on Nov. 9, 1930, in which he made clear he did not believe in a personal God with influence over human affairs, or in a soul distinct from one’s body. Religion, he wrote, began with fear, then acquired a moral dimension. “But there is a third stage of religious experience,” Einstein wrote. “I shall call it cosmic religious feeling.” He described it as the desire “to experience the universe as a single significant whole.” Spotting an attention-grabbing phrase, a week later the magazine ran a symposium headlined “Professor Einstein’s ‘Cosmic Religion,’” in which eight church ministers gave their views. Most found Einstein’s essay stimulating, even if they disagreed with particular points. The following year, Einstein’s essay was published in a booklet under the title “Cosmic Religion.”

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Work And The Meaning Of Life

Christianity Today:  Work Matters to God Because We Matter, by David L. Bahnsen (Author, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life (2024)):

If one were to summarize the underlying thesis of the contemporary faith and work movement in a single sentence, it would likely be “Your work matters to God.”

Dozens of books have been published on the subject and a seemingly significant movement of conferences, websites, and resources has gained traction in the past two decades. The answers to why our work matters to God and what that means practically may vary, but the message “Our work matters to God” has shaped much of the conversation in churches and Christian workplaces alike.

But I believe we need a more Kuyperian understanding of this concept. Our work matters to God because all of the created order belongs to Christ, and we find in the creation account not just the anthropological truths that matter to this subject (mankind is an image bearer of God) but the ontological truths as well (our very being is connected to our pre-Fall mandate to be the workers and cultivators of God’s creation). This foundational appeal to a theology of work requires a pre-Fall understanding of work and purpose and then a post-Fall application.

A Kuyperian understanding of this theology provides a vision for work that is, like all of nature, tainted by sin yet under the redemptive work of God’s plan in history. Human beings as image bearers of God, created with an incomprehensible capacity for productivity and creativity, demonstrate the lordship of Christ even in a fallen world and participate in the glorious redemption process as our earthly endeavors build God’s kingdom, business by business.

“Some people imagine the state of glory around God’s throne as though all labor will have ended, to taste heavenly bliss in pleasant idleness,” Abraham Kuyper has said. “These people know neither God nor his angels nor life as it will be in heaven.”

A declining view of work in the culture at large has managed to portray work as a meaningful contributor to stress, anxiety, desolation, and isolation. Humanistic assumptions, often subconsciously wedded to elitism, have given birth to the idea that standard market professions—often blue-collar or not requiring of a post-graduate degree—are “less than,” contributing to a societal nose-thumbing and to a severe worker dissatisfaction. This cause-and-effect dynamic is a vicious cycle that undermines fulfillment and flourishing.

The faith and work movement promises to be an antidote to this negative feedback loop. A high view of work negates the need to succumb to the thinking of a “dead-end job” and certainly avoids the temptation to exit the workforce all together (where degrees of despair are most magnified).

But I would argue that in the very creation mandate itself (Gen. 1–2) we find meaning in our earthly endeavors, which offers a remedy for this crisis of despair. Not only can we avoid the terribly counterproductive notion that work is causing these problems, but we can embrace the resolution that work may provide in solving these problems. ...

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Religious Lawyering In A Polarized Society

Amelia J. Uelmen (Georgetown), Religious Lawyering in a Polarized Society, 102 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 99 (2024):

I am deeply humbled to be included in the stellar lineup of speakers in this lecture series and delighted for the occasion to be in conversation with the University of Detroit-Mercy Law School community. Thank you for the invitation. I open my reflections with a few autobiographical notes as a way to illustrate some insights into the history and trajectory of what is termed the "religious lawyering movement." Then I would like to offer a few suggestions for developments in the field against the backdrop of our current cultural terrain.

I came to the legal profession as part of an effort to live an integrative spirituality of unity as developed within one of the Catholic ecclesial movements that flourished in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Focolare Movement. Having lived the Focolare spirituality since childhood, for me the first work of unity is interior: I see my work not as something to be "balanced" with the rest of my life, but rather as integrated into the whole of my identity as a religious and spiritual person. ...

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NY Times: Yeshiva University Reverses Itself And Bans LGBTQ Club

Following up on my previous post, Yeshiva University Agrees To Recognize LGBTQ Student Group After Five-Year Battle:  New York Times, Yeshiva University Reverses Itself and Bans L.G.B.T.Q. Club:

Two months after Yeshiva University said it would recognize an L.G.B.T.Q. student club on campus, bringing a yearslong legal battle to an end, the school has reversed course and banned the organization.

The school said the club, called Hareni, had violated both Jewish principles and the legal settlement. But lawyers for the students said it was leaders at the school, a Modern Orthodox Jewish institution with campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx, who had violated the agreement with hostile religious rhetoric.

In a letter to the community on Friday, the university repeated an argument it made unsuccessfully in state court in 2022, saying its undergraduate programs are “fundamentally religious.”

The school said that “recent actions and statements” from Hareni, which was formed after a legal battle with an unofficial club called the Pride Alliance, had led administrators to believe that it was “operating as a pride club under a different name and as such is antithetical to the Torah values of our yeshiva, as well as in violation of the approved guidelines and of the terms of the settlement agreement.”

“There is no place for such a club in yeshiva,” the letter continued, using the general term for an Orthodox Jewish educational institution. It said: “We remain fully committed to guiding our students in their challenges” in a manner consistent with Jewish religious law.

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President Trump Names Three Professors To Religious Liberty Commission's Advisory Board Of Legal Experts

White House Statement, President Donald Trump Names Advisory Board Members to the Religious Liberty Commission:

Today, President Donald Trump has designated the following individuals to serve on the advisory boards of the Religious Liberty Commission. On May 1st, the President signed an Executive Order establishing the Religious Liberty Commission. He designated Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as chair and Dr. Ben Carson as vice chair, as well as 11 other commission members. Today, he has designated individuals to serve on the three advisory boards comprised of religious leaders, legal experts, and lay advisors, respectively. ...

Advisory Board of Legal Experts

1. Francis Beckwith. A Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies, Affiliate Professor of Political Science, and Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy at Baylor University, Dr. Beckwith teaches and publishes in the areas of religion, jurisprudence, politics, and ethics. A graduate of Fordham University (Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy) and the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis (Master of Juridical Studies), he has published over 100 academic articles, book chapters, reviews, and reference entries.

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new paper debuting on the list at #2. The #1 paper is #281 among 12,001 tax papers in all-time downloads.

1. [1,258 Downloads]  Tax Fairness: Reconceptualising Taxation and Inequalities, by Rita de la Feria (Leeds; Google Scholar)
2. [565 Downloads]  IRS Officials' Stock Holdings and Corporate Tax Outcomes, by Michael Mayberry (Florida; Google Scholar), Eashwar Nagaraj (Florida) & Scott Rane (Florida; Google Scholar)
3. [401 Downloads]  Combining Charitable Remainder Unitrusts and Tax-Aware Strategies to Diversify Low-Basis Stock, by Joseph Liberman (AQR Capital Management) & Nathan Sosner (AQR Capital Management)
4. [369 Downloads]  From Relic to Relevance, The Resurgence of Tariffs, by Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar), Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Tamir Shanan (College of Management)
5. [342 Downloads]  Global Tax Decluttering, by Shu-Yi Oei (Duke; Google Scholar) & Diane Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar)

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education:

1. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Projected 2026-27 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Overall
2. New York Times, 89-Year Old Retired Florida Professor Left Bulk Of Her $2.8 Million Estate To 31 Former Students
3. Adam Bonica (Stanford), Adam Chilton (Chicago), Kyle Rozema (Northwestern) & Maya Sen (Harvard), Law Professors Have Become More Liberal, But They Also Have Become More Conservative Than Their Students
4. ABA Press Release, ABA Legal Ed Council Votes Unanimously To Suspend Law School Diversity Accreditation Standard Until August 31, 2026 Due To Trump's DEI Crackdown
5. Manhattan Institute, It’s Time For Professors to Teach More
6. The Intercept, NYU About-Face: Law Students Can Take Exams Without Renouncing Protests
7. Brian Leiter (Chicago) & Daniel Rodriguez (Northwestern), Opposition Grows To ABA's Proposal To Double The Experiential Learning Accreditation Requirement
8. ABA Journal, ABA Legal Ed Council Proposes To Double Experiential Learning Accreditation Requirement To 12 Credits
9. Indiana-McKinney Law, Death Of James P. White, ABA Consultant On Legal Education (1974-2000)
10. Jonathan Turley (George Washington), Oregon Law Professor Accuses Oregon Law Review of Anti-Israeli Discrimination

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to legal education posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Tax:

1. Wall Street Journal, Will Tax Complexity Force Pope Leo To Renounce His U.S. Citizenship?
2. Call For Tax Papers, Washington University Law Review Symposium On Taxing, Spending, And The Constitution
3. Trevor Fry (J.D. 2025, Boston College), For Everything Else, There's Taxes: Why Credit Card Rewards Should Stop Being Priceless
4. Rebecca Kysar (Fordham), The Stakes Of The Global Tax Deal For International Economic Governance
5. Brian Leiter (Chicago), Lucy Msall Joins Chicago Tax Faculty
6. ABA Tax Section, May Meeting Kicks Off In Washington, D.C.
7. Orly Mazur (SMU) & Adam Thimmesch (Nebraska), Cooperative Federalism And The Digital Tax Impasse
8. Bridget Crawford (Pace), Confronting Inequality: Three Eras Of Gender And Tax Scholarship
9. David Elkins (Netanya), Review Of The Normative Shift In Corporate Tax Policy After GloBE By Tarcisio Diniz Magalhães (Antwerp) & Allison Christians (McGill)
10. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Faith:

1. David Brooks, How To Survive The Trump Years With Your Spirit Intact
2. Harvard Law, ‘A Citizen of Heaven And Harvard’: Honoring The Life And Ongoing Impact Of Bill Stuntz
3. New York Times Op-Ed (Ross Douthat), What The World Needs From Pope Leo
4. Dispatch Faith (Alastair Roberts (Theopolis Institute)), Is Empathy A Sin?
5. Holy See Press Office, Pope Leo's First Homily
   Richard Murphy (Funding the Future), Christianity And ChatGPT

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here. 

SALT Workaround Used By Doctors, Lawyers Axed In GOP Tax Bill

Bloomberg, SALT Workaround Used by Doctors, Lawyers Axed in GOP Tax Bill:

House Republicans’ bill to extend and expand Trump’s 2017 tax law would also raise revenue by cutting many professional service providers out of using state workarounds for the cap on state and local tax deductions.

Professional groups, including the American Institute of CPAs, are already asking for changes that would restore the value of pass-through entity tax regimes that became popular in 36 states and New York City after the 2017 law put a $10,000 limit on state and local tax payments that can be deducted from individuals’ federal returns.

These tax strategies give partnerships and S corporations the option to pay state and local taxes at the entity level, instead of having individual members pay as they normally would, and thus help the individuals avoid the SALT limit.

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California Bar Cops To Multiple Scoring Errors On Disastrous February Bar Exam; Third Party Will Do A Comprehensive Review

The Recorder, State Bar Acknowledges Scoring Errors, Including Swapped Essays, on February Exam:

California's state bar on Wednesday acknowledged scoring problems on the February 2025 exam that led to four applicants being told incorrectly that they had failed the test.

In an email to February test-takers, a statement attributed to the bar's office of admission said that a manual review of thousands of exams revealed that three applicants were graded on essays submitted by other people. ...

Wednesday's revelations are just the latest troubles for a test marked by planning foul-ups, technical meltdowns and a surprise announcement that some of the questions were crafted using artificial intelligence.

"We understand how frustrating the past several months have been for many of you, and we apologize," the statement said. "In recognition of both the need for greater transparency around and confidence in the scoring process, as well as the significant demands on staff who are necessarily focusing on planning for a successful July bar exam administration, the State Bar will engage an independent third party to manage a comprehensive review of all concerns expressed about scoring and grading."

Reuters, California Bar Exam-Takers Were Told They Failed. Oops, They Passed.:

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Survey: Political Climate And Trump's Election Are Driving Law School Applicant Surge

Kaplan Survey, Political Climate and 2024 Election Results Are Driving Law School Applicant Surge:

New survey results from global educational services provider Kaplan confirms what others have hypothesized about over the past few months: Politics is indeed playing a role in this year’s 20 percent increase in law school applicants, reminiscent of the big applicant boost in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Among the more than 300 pre-law students Kaplan surveyed, 53 percent say the current domestic political climate impacted their decision to apply. And in a separate survey question, 42 percent of pre-law students specifically said the results of the 2024 presidential election factored into their decision to pursue law school. ...

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Repealing The Estate Tax Could Create Headaches For The Rich And Worsen Inequality

Reid Kress Weisbord (Rutgers) & Naomi Cahn (Virginia), Repealing the Estate Tax Could Create Headaches For the Rich – As Well As Worsen Inequality:

Nothing is more certain than death and taxes, Benjamin Franklin famously declared. And, since 1916, the federal government has imposed an estate tax on the transfer of property owned at death.

But the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers may be on the verge of changing all that. GOP legislators are now considering a massive bill that includes major tax law changes and could pass by June or July 2025. Among the measures under consideration in both the House and Senate is the Death Tax Repeal Act, which would end the federal estate tax and reduce the tax rate on lifetime gifts. ...

As law professors who specialize in trusts and estates, we’re interested in what might happen next. Interestingly, while the long-term impact to the federal budget would be significant, repealing the estate tax would complicate estate planning for the wealthy taxpayers who might not save all that much money. ...

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Narotzki Reviews The Flip And Flop Of Taxing Alimony By Kahn & Roman

This week, Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) reviews a new paper by Jeffrey H. Kahn (Florida State) & Rebecca Roman (Gibson Dunn, Dallas), The Flip and Flop of Taxing Alimony, 16 Colum. J. Tax L. 131 (2025).

Kahn and Roman’s article, The Flip and Flop of Taxing Alimony, offers a rigorous and well-structured analysis of a significant yet often overlooked shift in U.S. tax policy: the treatment of alimony payments following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). Although the article focuses on the specific issue of alimony taxation, its analysis engages with foundational tax law concepts, including the ability-to-pay principle, progressive rate structures, the assignment of income doctrine, and the theoretical foundations of the income tax system. The authors approach the topic from multiple doctrinal, historical, and policy angles, resulting in a thorough and intellectually grounded examination.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, Does Artificial Intelligence Have a Role in Legal Scholarship?
• ABA Journal, Should Law Schools Have More Hands-On Learning Requirements?
• ABA Press Release, Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education Extends Standard 206 Suspension to 2026
• Americans for Equal Opportunity, New Civil Rights Group Files Federal Discrimination Complaint Alleging Racial Bias in Elite Law Fellowship Program
• Miriam Baer (Brooklyn), Taking Integrity Risks Seriously
• Adam Bonica (Stanford), Adam Chilton (Chicago), Kyle Rozema (Northwestern) & Maya Sen (Harvard), Ideological Concordance Between Students and Professors 
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Projected 2026-27 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Overall

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Tax Policy In The Trump Administration

• Hank Adler (Chapman) & Christopher Cox (UC-Irvine), Burned Lots in L.A. Will Sit Empty For Decades Unless Congress Tweaks the Tax Code
• Bloomberg, Carried Interest Tax Break Won’t Die
• Bloomberg, GOP Eyes Endowment Tax Hike in Escalation of Ivy League Feud
• Bloomberg, GOP Tax Bill Is Exactly Wrong For This Economic Moment
• Bloomberg, GOP Tax Package Grapples With Impact of Loper Bright Ruling
• Bloomberg, GOP To Phase Out Biden Energy Credits To Pay For Tax Cuts
• Bloomberg, Here Are the Winners and Losers in the Republican Tax Bill
• Bloomberg, House Tax Bill Draft Calls for $30,000 SALT Deduction Limit
• Bloomberg, Harvard, MIT, Yale Face Endowment Tax Hike While Notre Dame Scores Break

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Opposition Grows To ABA's Proposal To Double The Experiential Learning Accreditation Requirement

Following up on Tuesday's post, ABA Legal Ed Council Proposes To Double Experiential Learning Accreditation Requirement To 12 Credits:

Daniel B. Rodriguez (Northwestern; Google Scholar), ABA Accreditation Once More: Are They Making Me Eat My Words?:

Less than a week after a short post urging the ABA Section on Legal Education to keep up its generally good work and encouraging external folks to avoid major changes that could well throw out the baby with the bathwater, the Section has announced its intention to consider a very bad idea from the Standards Committee (previously the “Standards Review Committee”). This “very bad idea” is the doubling of the required number of credits of so-called “experiential learning” for students to graduate. While I associate myself squarely with those who value the curricular programs, run mainly through law school clinics, and who encourage students to pursue opportunities for experiential learning during my time in law school, the insistence on this once-size-fits all requirement is a bad idea coming at a bad time. ...

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D.C. District Court Blocks DOJ's Cancellation Of Grants To ABA

Following up on my previous post, ABA Files Suit Against DOJ's Funding Cuts That Forced Layoffs Of 300 Employees:  American Bar Association v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 25-cv-1263 (D.D.C. May 14, 2025):

Last month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memorandum prohibiting all Department of Justice (“DOJ”) lawyers from participating in events sponsored by the American Bar Association (“ABA”) on official time. The reason, Blanche candidly explained, was that the ABA had recently joined a lawsuit against the Trump Administration. The next day, DOJ cancelled a series of grants with the ABA that funded services to victims of domestic and sexual violence. The only explanation offered for the cancellation was a terse statement indicating that the grants “no longer effectuate[] . . . [DOJ] priorities.” Connecting these two rather large dots, the ABA promptly filed suit. Among other claims, the complaint alleges that termination of the grants constituted unlawful retaliation against the ABA for exercising its First Amendment right to petition the courts. A motion for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction preventing DOJ from enforcing the termination soon followed.

The government does not meaningfully contest the merits of the ABA’s First Amendment retaliation claim. It points to no deficiencies in the ABA’s performance of its grant obligations. It concedes that similar grants administered by other organizations remain in place. It agrees that bringing a lawsuit is protected by the First Amendment. And it suggests no other cause for the cancellation apart from the sentiments expressed by Deputy Attorney General Blanche in his memorandum.

Rather, the government objects to the issuance of a preliminary injunction mainly on jurisdictional grounds.

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Tax Prof Presentations At The Biennial Conference on International Economic Law Today At Michigan

Tax presentations at the Biennial Conference on International Economic Law hosted by the University of Michigan Law School and the American Society of International Law (program): 

Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar), Global Tax Wars in the Digital Era, 75 Am. U. L. Rev. ___ (2025) (reviewed by Mirit Eyal (Alabama; Google Scholar) here): 

The digital economy fundamentally disrupts traditional international tax principles that rely on physical presence. When a business earns income abroad, the country of residence (where the taxpayer resides) and the country of source (where income is generated) both have legitimate, competing claims to tax that income. The international tax system favors residence-based taxation. The source country has the right to tax business profits only if the enterprise carries on a permanent establishment within its borders, which typically requires a physical presence. The permanent establishment standard becomes flawed in a digital economy where profit shifting practices are abundant and businesses no longer need a physical presence in the location of their online consumer markets.

An upcoming United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation recognizes these challenges and is overwhelmingly supported by Global South economies. However, the Global North has historically dominated the international tax regime through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), informally known as the "World Tax Organization." A UN framework convention creates potential conflict in international tax policymaking and would need to bridge the underlying North-South divide. 

This article explores the "tax wars" surrounding the leadership for global tax governance, contrasting the taxing powers and interests of the OECD-led Global North with those of the UN-backed Global South. It argues for a shift toward source-based taxation by revisiting the permanent establishment standard. To achieve this, the article introduces a significant economic presence doctrine that would expand the permanent establishment criteria to include online businesses. This proposal addresses longstanding inequities and is increasingly warranted in a digital economy that does not depend on physical presence.

Panel on International Tax Cooperation: 

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Columbia Journal Of Tax Law Publishes New Issue

The Columbia Journal of Tax Law has published a new issue (Vol. 15, No. 2 (Summer 2024)):

• Philip Hackney (Pittsburgh; Google Scholar), Keep Charitable Oversight in the IRS, 15 Colum. J. Tax L. 130 (2024)

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New Civil Rights Group Files Federal Discrimination Complaint Against Fellowship Program And 44 Participating BigLaw Firms

New Civil Rights Group Files Federal Discrimination Complaint Alleging Racial Bias in Elite Law Fellowship Program:

Americans for Equal Opportunity (AEO), a civil rights membership organization, announced today that it has filed a formal Charge of Discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) and 44 of the nation’s largest law firms.

AEO filed the complaint on behalf of several members who were rejected from the 2025 SEO Law Fellowship despite meeting or exceeding all academic and professional qualifications. According to AEO, these applicants were excluded because they do not belong to the racial or ethnic groups preferred by SEO and its partner firms—namely, Black, Hispanic, or Native American applicants.

“This is systemic discrimination, plain and simple,” said AEO Board President Clegg Ivey. “SEO and its 44 partner law firms have built a racially exclusive hiring track that locks out qualified students based on the color of their skin. That’s not diversity—that’s unlawful discrimination.”

The complaint describes SEO as both a staffing agency and a joint employer that works on behalf of these law firms to implement race-based selection processes aimed at satisfying racial quotas and diversity targets. According to AEO, SEO recruits, screens, and selects roughly 200 Fellows each year and places them directly into paid summer positions at the firms, which can pay over $4,000 per week. Often, the firms themselves do not conduct their own independent HR evaluations of candidates.

“Law firms use SEO to bypass traditional merit-based hiring,” Ivey continued. “They outsource the selection process to a nonprofit organization that openly discriminates on their behalf, and they reward that discrimination with lucrative internship and job offers—often before students have received a single law school grade. Not only do they discriminate, they do it through a tax-exempt organization and treat it like a charitable contribution.”

The charge further asserts that many of the Fellowship’s participants are ultimately fast-tracked into otherwise competitive, full-time, permanent positions at the Sponsor Firms, often receiving offers to join the firm as an employee and bonuses not available to similarly situated law students of disfavored racial backgrounds, who must have top academic credentials to secure a job offer. (Entry-level positions at the Sponsor Firms pay a minimum of $220,000 per year before bonuses.)

AEO contends that both SEO and the Sponsor Firms are liable for unlawful discrimination, arguing that the program violates the Civil Rights Act’s prohibitions on race-based hiring by both employment agencies and employers.

Participating Law Firms:

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Narotzki: Tax Treaties In The Wind

Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar), Tax Treaties in the Wind, 13 Penn St. J.L. & Int’l Affs. 2 (2025):

Since World War II, tax treaties have served as vital instruments for fostering cross-border investment and economic cooperation. However, the rise of economic nationalism and protectionism now threatens the stability of these agreements. This article examines what I argue is the first sign of the unraveling of the international tax treaty network, driven by a shift towards Economic Sovereignty Neutrality (ESN), a new approach that prioritizes domestic interests and economic resilience over traditional principles of capital neutrality.

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Lucy Msall Joins Chicago Tax Faculty

Lucy Msall (Ph.D. (Economics) 2025, Chicago; Google Scholar), will join the Chicago faculty as an Assistant Professor of Law in 2026. Brian Leiter (Chicago):

She is the first graduate of our relatively new Master of Legal Studies program to be hired into a tenure-track job in a law school. Her primary areas of teaching and research interest include tax law and policy, law & economics, and empirical legal studies.

In the 2025-26 academic year, she will be a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Wealth and Income Inequality at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Her job talk paper was Never-Realized Capital Gains (with Ole-Andreas Næss (Norwegian School of Economics; Google Scholar)):

Appreciated assets are subject to capital gains tax when sold by their original owner. Yet under policies of “stepped-up basis at inheritance,” many countries forgive this latent tax obligation if the asset is instead transferred, unsold, to the owner’s heir.

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Northwestern Must Face Palestinian Law Grad's Discrimination Lawsuit

Update:  Eugene Volokh (UCLA), Court Dismisses Palestinian Muslim Student Activist's Harassment Complaint Against Northwestern Law School, But Discrimination Claim Can Go Forward

Reuters, Northwestern University Must Face Palestinian Law Grad's Discrimination Suit:

A former Northwestern law student can proceed with a discrimination lawsuit that claims the school failed to protect her from being harassed over her pro-Palestine activism, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday [Elagha v. Northwestern University, No. 24-C-12066 (N.D. Ill. May 13, 2025)].

Plaintiff Yasmeen Elagha in November sued Northwestern and several law school officials, including law dean Hari Osofsky, alleging she was discriminated against and subjected to a hostile educational environment.

Elagha, who is a Palestinian Muslim, said university officials failed to intervene after fellow students falsely claimed she attacked them during a campus protest. She also alleged that students released her personal information online and got her job offer at a major law firm rescinded.

U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras in Chicago dismissed Elagha's claim of a hostile educational environment, but allowed her claim of intentional discrimination to proceed after Northwestern filed a motion to dismiss the case. ...

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Tax Considerations For The Potential U.S. Annexation Of Greenland

Libin Zhang (Fried Frank, New York), Tax Considerations for the Potential U.S. Annexation of Greenland, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 1843 (Mar. 10, 2025):

There have been many proposals over the last 150 years for the United States to acquire Greenland. However, the tax scholarship literature has neglected to focus on the tax consequences of such an annexation. Important and understudied issues include the taxation of the 58,000 Greenlanders, corporate taxation of controlled foreign corporations, and the potential extension of qualified opportunity zones to the world’s largest island. This article contributes to the growing field of critical tax manifest destiny studies as the United States reconsiders its territorial scope from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico).

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Boyd: The Tax Struggle And Renewable Power

William Boyd (UCLA; Google Scholar), The Tax Struggle and Renewable Power, 79 Tax L. Rev. ___ (2026):

This Article shows how the tools of public finance have been deployed over more than forty years to promote a privatized and financialized model of renewable energy ownership in the United States and what this means for the clean energy transition. In contrast to mainstream theories of public finance, the Article develops a more critical political economy of public finance that emphasizes the conflicts and struggles that shape tax policy and the ways this has affected patterns of investment and ownership across the economy. The overall goal is to show how law and legal arrangements, operating through the tax code and specific regulatory and accounting rules, have enabled certain logics to unfold that have in turn created and sustained an approach to renewable energy finance and ownership that is increasingly dominated by a handful of banks and other large financial institutions, specialized infrastructure funds, a rising class of so-called clean energy supermajors, and, increasingly, large technology companies seeking to feed the voracious power demand of data centers. 

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Oregon Law Professor Accuses Oregon Law Review of Anti-Israeli Discrimination

Jonathan Turley (George Washington; Google Scholar), Oregon Law Professor Accuses Oregon Law Review of Anti-Israeli Discrimination:

The University of Oregon has long faced controversies over the alleged political bias on its campuses, including celebrating the career of a professor who physically attacked pro-life students as a model of activism. It has been criticized for monitoring off-campus speech and unconstitutionally censoring dissenting faculty. Now, Law Professor Ofer Raban is accusing the Law Review and school administrators of discriminating against an Israeli professor who was allegedly rejected for publication because of his association with an Israeli university.

Prof. Raban offered the following account:

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