This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Bloomberg Law, California Bar Recommends Provisional Licensure For All Who Failed And Withdrew From The February Bar Exam
2. The Recorder, California Bar Blocked Law School Deans And Professors From Vetting Troubled Bar Exam
3. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 80% Through The Fall 2025 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Up 20% (Black Applicants Are Up 30%)
4. Reuters, Summer Associate Hiring Hit All-Time Low In 2024; 78% Of 2025 Summer Associate Offers Were Made Before August 1
5. Wall Street Journal, The Competition To Get Into Law School Is Brutal This Year
6. Will Monroe, Tracy Norton & Susan Tanner (LSU), Law Profs’ Generative AI Sandbox
7. preLaw, The Best Law Schools For Practical Training
8. Chronicle of Higher Education, The Diversity Detective: Cornell Law Prof Is Committed To Rooting Out Race Consciousness From Higher Ed
9. New York Times, Yale Law School Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her Of Terrorist Link
10. ABA Journal, State Bar Of California Announces Remediation Actions For The February Bar Exam And Plans For The July Bar Exam

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. Tax Workshops: 
   1. Heather Evans (Canadian Tax Foundation), Tim Fitzsimmons (Fasken, Ontario) & Josh Jones (Blakes, Toronto) At Toronto, Clearing Skies in the Forecast: Is Tax Administration the Road to Simplification?
   2. Rebecca Kysar (Fordham) At San Diego, The Stakes of the Global Tax Deal For International Economic Governance
   3. Michael Strain (American Enterprise Institute) At Georgetown, Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift Toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy 
   4. Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina) At Duke, Tax and the Myth of the Family Farm
   5. Alex Zhang (Emory) At Missouri, The Other Taxation 
2. John Brooks (Fordham) & David Gamage (Missouri), The Original Meaning Of The Sixteenth Amendment
3. Manoj Viswanathan (UC Law-SF), Damage Award Taxation And Distributive Justice 
4. Yale Budget Lab, ‘Buy-Borrow-Die’: Reforming The Tax Treatment Of Borrowing Against Appreciated Assets
5. Anthony Infanti (Pittsburgh), Taxation And Slavery In Colonial America
6. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
7. Pittsburgh Tax Review, New Issue
8. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), New Tax Articles
9. Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama), Review Of Global Tax Wars In The Digital Era By Assaf Harpaz (Georgia)
10. Luís Calderón Gómez (Cardozo) & Mitchell Kane (NYU), Coin Taxes
    

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. New York Times (Ruth Graham), The Malcolm Gladwell Of Conservative Christianity
2. Inside Higher Ed, Can Faith-Based Colleges (And Law Schools) Use Religious Freedom To Defend Against Trump’s Attacks On DEI?
3. Surf Report, Pepperdine Caruso Law’s Nootbaar Institute Co-Sponsors Orthodox Union’s Landmark Conference: Combating Antisemitism Through The Law
4. Christianity Today Op-Ed (Phoebe Farag Mikhail), Why Christians Fast During Lent 129
5. Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (Gary Saul Morson (Northwestern)), Dostoevsky’s (And Our) Struggle With Faith
   The Free Press, Does The West Need A Religious Revival? 

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. 

Hickman & Wildermuth: Harmonizing Delegation And Deference After Loper Bright

Kristin E. Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar) & Amy J. Wildermuth (Pittsburgh), Harmonizing Delegation and Deference After Loper Bright, 100 N.Y.U. L. Rev. ___ (2025):

By overturning Chevron, the Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision clearly changed the way in which courts must approach agency actions interpreting statutes. But Loper Bright stopped well short of declaring that courts should always ignore agency interpretations and only interpret statutes using their independent judgment. In two critical paragraphs, the Court acknowledged that some statutory provisions delegate discretionary authority to agencies counseled a more restrained judicial review for reasoned decisionmaking when agencies exercise such power. But, whereas Chevron focused nearly exclusively on the statutory word or phrase that an agency was endeavoring to interpret and implement, Loper Bright shifts the analysis at least initially to the delegations themselves-i.e., the statutory terms that give agencies the authority to act in the first place. 

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The Feminist Law Professor Who Wants To Stop Arresting People For Domestic Violence

The Atlantic, The Feminist Law Professor Who Wants to Stop Arresting People for Domestic Violence:

For years, Leigh Goodmark was convinced that the way to keep women safe was through arrests and prosecutions. Now she’s pushing for the opposite.

t’s 10:55 A.M. on a Wednesday, early by law-school standards, and eight students are gathered in a bright seminar room at the University of Maryland’s law school. The students are all women, and each has in front of her an oversized metal water bottle, a cup of coffee, or both. They are dressed comfortably but respectfully: black boots, light sweaters. Their professor, Leigh Goodmark, also wears black boots and an understated sweater, and also sits behind a giant water bottle. For the next hour, no one will look at her phone.

This is the Gender Violence Clinic, one of the most sought-after at the school. Students act as legal representatives for women—most of them incarcerated, many for life, all victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and other forms of gender-related violence. That year, like every year, several students arrived believing that they would be addressing gender violence in the familiar way: by locking up bad men and freeing victimized women. What they found was more complicated. The clinic’s clients are victims but also perpetrators of violence. Some have harmed, or even killed, employers, strangers, sex workers, relatives, even their own children. (Goodmark has since changed the name of the clinic to Gender, Prison, and Trauma to clarify its subject matter for students.) But, instead of calling on law enforcement to protect these women from violence, the students are tasked with protecting them from mistreatment within the criminal-justice system.

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Pepperdine Caruso Law Clinical Program Update

Jeff Baker (Pepperdine; Google Scholar), Annual Updates: Pepperdine Caruso Law's Program of Clinical Education: 

Through 2024, our clinical program continues to thrive and grow as we advance our vital missions of excellent legal education, deep professional formation, and effective access to justice. The legal clinics at the heart of our enterprise aim to prepare law students to become lawyers who bring light and dignity to the world. In a moment of political polarization, global crises, and national upheaval, we commit to the development of smart, ready, ethical lawyers with hearts and minds for justice and to the promotion of just laws and legal systems.

At the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, our communities and neighbors have suffered extraordinary losses from natural disasters. We are rising to meet those needs. Our standing clinics have been flexible and creative to teach students with major disruptions and to continue excellent services to our clients. Our Disaster Relief Clinic and Pro Bono programs have activated immediate programs for community education, lawyer training, and limited-scope clinics in neighborhoods wounded in the fires. Already we have served hundreds of clients and trained hundreds more lawyers. We are taking steps now to expand and deepen this work for Los Angeles for the duration of recovery and rebuilding.

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Applications Are Open For Two ABA Tax Section Fellowships

ABA Tax Section, Tax Analysts Public Service Fellowship:

The application for the 2025-2027 Tax Analysts Public Service Fellowship is now open! Completed applications are due May 15, 2025. Send completed applications to [email protected].

The Tax Analysts Public Service Fellowship was created in response to a need for tax legal assistance for low-income taxpayers, to foster a greater interest in tax-related public service and to provide seasoned attorneys the opportunity to move into the public interest sector.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Kim Reviews Parada's U.N. International Tax Cooperation

This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) reviews a recent article by Leopoldo Parada (King's College London; Google Scholar), U.N. International Tax Cooperation: The Terms of References Final Draft, 116 Tax Notes Int'l 771 (Nov. 4, 2024).

The 30th session of the UN Tax Committee will take place next week from March 24 to March 27, 2025, at the UN Headquarters in New York. The Committee will discuss, among others, the digitalized and globalized economy, UN Model Tax Convention updates, environmental taxation, wealth and solidarity taxes, crypto taxation (where I am a proud member of the ad hoc committee), and the relation of tax to trade and investment. Celebrating 20 years of international tax cooperation at the UN, it is worth examining the proposed U.N. Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, which aims to create a system of international tax cooperation to close gaps in existing tax systems that prevent many countries from collecting much-needed tax revenues. Leopoldo Parada (King's College London; Google Scholar)'s recent article, U.N. International Tax Cooperation: The Terms of References Final Draft, 116 Tax Notes Int'l 771 (Nov. 4, 2024), provides a comprehensive analysis of the final draft of the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the U.N. Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, Former George Mason University Law Prof Says He's ‘Fully Vindicated’ After ‘Relatively Modest’ Defamation Suit Settlement
• ABA Journal, State Bar of California Considers Provisional Licenses for February Bar Exam Takers
• American Bar Association, St. Thomas Law School Out Of Compliance With Financial Resources Accreditation Standard
• Bloomberg Law, How AI is Prompting Law Schools to Revise Their Honor Codes
• John Bliss (Denver), Teaching Law in the Age of Generative AI
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 80% Through The Fall 2025 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Up 20% (Black Applicants Are Up 30%)  

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Tax Policy In The Trump Administration

• Bloomberg, Fired IRS Employees Reinstated After Maryland Judge's Order
• Bloomberg, IRS Planned Worker Cuts Would Hit Taxpayer Advocate, Direct File Staff
• Brookings Institution, 199A’s Sunset: A Golden Opportunity to Rethink Business Taxation
• Cato Institute, Tax Expenditure Madness Bracket: Pick the Worst Tax Loophole
• Kimberly Clausing (UCLA), What’s the Deal With Tariffs?
• Dēmos, Taxing Income versus Wealth: U.S. Tax Code Widens the Racial Wealth Divide
• Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Shelter Skelter: How the Educational Choice for Children Act Would Use Tax Avoidance to Fuel School Privatization
• New York Times, The Budget Trick the G.O.P. Might Use to Make a $4 Trillion Tax Cut Look Free

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, March 24: Luís Carlos Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) will present Coin Taxes, 16 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. __ (2025) (with Mitchell Kane (NYU; Google Scholar)), as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love. 

Tuesday, March 25: Janet Holtzblatt (Tax Policy Center) will present Measuring Success: New Performance Metrics for a New Internal Revenue Service as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle and Day Manoli. 

Thursday, March 27: Stephen Shay (Boston College; Google Scholar) will present The UTPR and Double Tax Treaties: Does the UTPR Violate OECD Model Capital Ownership Non-discrimination? as part of the Toronto James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Ben Alarie. 

Friday, March 28: Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) will present Artificial Intelligence and Taxpayer Entity as part of the Case Western Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet (JOLTI) Symposium. If you would like to attend, please register here. 

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ABA Finds St. Thomas Law School Out Of Compliance With Financial Resources Accreditation Standard

Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Notice of Finding of Noncompliance With Standard 202, St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law (Feb. 2025):

At its February 20-21, 2025, meeting, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association (the “Council”) considered the status of St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law (the “Law School”) and concluded that the Law School is not in compliance with Standard 202(b) ["A law school shall maintain a budget reflecting anticipated financial resources and expenses for the current and subsequent three fiscal years. For law schools that are part of a university, the budget must reflect any anticipated obligations of the law school to the university or of the university to the law school."].

In accordance with Rule 51(b)(6), the Managing Director shall provide public notification of the Council’s conclusions and decision concerning a law school’s noncompliance, under Rule 11(a)(4), with one or more of the Core Standards. Pursuant to Rule 15, Standard 202 (Resources for Program) is a Core Standard. Consequently, pursuant to Internal Operating Practice 5 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, this public memorandum is being issued within one business day of the time the Law School was notified of the Council’s decision.

The Law School has been asked to submit a report by September 26, 2025, and to appear before the Council at its February 2026 meeting. The Council will consider the written report at its November 13-15, 2025, meeting. If the information provided in the written report demonstrates compliance with Standard 202(b), then the Council will find the Law School to be in compliance with Standard 202(b) and cancel the hearing.

ABA Journal, St. Thomas College of Law Falls Out of Compliance With ABA Accreditation Standard Focused on Financial Resources:

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ATPI And Pace Conference: Tax Law, The Environment, And Climate Change

The American Tax Policy Institute (ATPI) and Pace Law host a conference today and tomorrow on Tax Law, the Environment, and Climate Change (agenda): 

The American Tax Policy Institute and Pace | Haub Law Conference on Tax Law, the Environment, and Climate Change is a two-day conference featuring a variety of insightful panels focusing on pressing environmental concerns and the use of tax law to advance sustainability. Panelists and moderators will consist of leaders in tax law, environmental law, and other prominent members of academia.

Friday, March 21

Panel I: Climate Change and the Inflation Reduction Act: How WeGot Here (9:15 AM - 10:30 AM)

Passed in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 contained multiple tax incentives designed to encourage the growth of the so-called “clean energy economy.” Through tax credits and incentives, the government stood to make a $400 billion investment in climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, the first few months of the new presidential administration have seen the rollback of environmental regulations, the freezing of funds for clean energy, the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, and a commitment to growing the fossil fuel industry. This panel will explore what led to the Inflation Reduction Act and whether it retains any vitality. Given the dismantling of governmental committees and bodies responsible for collecting and reporting accurate financial and economic data, how can lawyers, accountants, economists, and others continue to work on energy-related matters? What challenges will there be in assessing the impact of any past or future spending? What lessons can be drawn from the withdrawal of the United States from a major international treaty on climate change?

• Michael D. Hamersky (Pace) (moderator) 
• Neil Mehrotra (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; Google Scholar), Economic Implications of the Climate Provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (with John Bistline (Electric Power Research Institute; Google Scholar) & Catherine Wolfram (MIT; Google Scholar)) 
• Adam Orford (Georgia; Google Scholar), The Ongoing Need for Spending Impact Assessment
• Gabriel Weil (Touro; Google Scholar), Climate Nationalism
• Genevieve Tokic (Northwestern), Environmental Tax Incentives: Lessons from the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (So Far)  

Panel II: Carbon Tax and Other Pricing Proposals (11:00 AM - 12:15 PM) 

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Gómez & Kane: Coin Taxes

Luís Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) & Mitchell Kane (NYU), Coin Taxes, 16 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. ___ (2025):

New kinds of private money are thriving, with increasing circulation, growing acceptance, and rapid technological innovation. But this new suffers from an old problem: bank runs. Bank runs can destabilize even well-regulated and healthy banks, and their contagion can catalyze and amplify a system-wide financial crisis. Since the 1930s, policymakers have sought to protect our financial system from bank runs through public deposit insurance and other emergency response mechanisms. Those historically effective policy tools, however, are critically unavailable or ineffective in the context of these new types of money. As a result, these new types of money remain critically vulnerable to bank runs, and the potential for financial contagion from their failure poses catastrophic risks to society.

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After Disastrous Bar Exam Rollout, California Supreme Court To Boost Test Oversight

Reuters, After Disastrous Bar Exam Rollout, California Supreme Court to Boost Test Oversight:

The California Supreme Court will step up its oversight of the state’s lawyer admissions following the chaotic February bar exam, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said during her annual State of the Judiciary address [transcript; video].

The February exam — the debut of a hybrid in person and remote exam without any of the components of the national bar exam California has used for decades — was marred by widespread technical and logistical problems. Some test takers were unable to log in to the exam at all, while others faced delays, computer crashes, lax exam security, distracting proctors, and a copy-and-paste function that didn’t work. ...

“It is literally life-changing for many students,” Guerrero said of the bar exam during her Tuesday address. “The additional stress, frustration and anxiety faced by some examinees is inexcusable.” ...

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Yale: ‘Buy-Borrow-Die’: Reforming The Tax Treatment Of Borrowing Against Appreciated Assets

Yale Budget Lab, “Buy-Borrow-Die": Options for Reforming the Tax Treatment of Borrowing Against Appreciated Assets:

Designing a potential extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is the central tax policy question facing Congress in 2025. Because a straightforward extension of the TCJA would come with a fiscal cost of more than $4 trillion over ten years, lawmakers and policy experts have expressed interest in incorporating additional revenue-raising provisions into an extension package—often with a focus on areas where fundamental reform would be beneficial.

One such area is the so-called "buy-borrow-die" strategy, a tax planning technique which allows wealthy Americans to pay low tax rates on consumed income,  a tax planning technique which allows wealthy Americans to pay low tax rates on consumed income, creates horizontal inequities, and distorts portfolio allocation decisions. Buy-borrow-die has attracted growing attention from economists, legal scholars, and politicians seeking ways to reform how capital gains are taxed in the US.

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The Diversity Detective: Cornell Law Prof Is Committed To Rooting Out Race Consciousness From Higher Ed

Chronicle of Higher Education, The Diversity Detective: William A. Jacobson Is Committed to Rooting Race Consciousness From Higher Ed, One Program at a Time:

William A. Jacobson thinks America has a race problem.

Anti-Black racism, the Cornell University law professor says, is wildly exaggerated. Some Black Lives Matter activists are anti-American fascists. And it’s white people who are now more likely to be the victims of discrimination.

In 2020, students, alumni, and law professors tried — unsuccessfully — to get Jacobson fired for a series of blog posts they perceived as creating a hostile learning environment for Black students. Undeterred, Jacobson started one of the nation’s most aggressive campaigns to suss out and report race-conscious programs in higher education.

He and three other lawyers have filed 60 complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against identity-focused programs and scholarships. That includes an MBA fellowship program for Latino students, a George Floyd memorial scholarship for Black students, and a training course exclusively for white parents to learn how to fight white supremacy. Of those 60 complaints, 35 cases resulted in schools and colleges changing eligibility requirements for various programs or ending them altogether.

Jacobson manages four websites, publishes a weekly podcast, has written op-eds in The New York Times, and has been featured on Fox News more than 10 times. He has mobilized dozens of professors from across the country to track on his website criticalrace.org hundreds of social-justice statements, staff diversity trainings, and courses he says indoctrinate students with false ideas about American racism. His site has been cited more than 170 times by mainstream-media outlets.

The Legal Insurrection Foundation, Jacobson’s nonprofit, collected $1.2 million in revenue from donations and grants in 2023, according to tax filings. It’s not clear who has donated to his cause.

“There is no good that can come in our universities or our society by making people focus on their skin color and their ethnicity and by doling out particularly government-funded benefits based on race or ethnicity,” Jacobson said in an interview. “I think it’s setting people against each other, and it is not advancing us.”

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How AI Is Prompting Law Schools To Revise Their Honor Codes

Bloomberg Law, How AI is Prompting Law Schools to Revise Their Honor Codes:

Law schools are updating their honor codes to cover use of artificial intelligence in response to students’ rapid uptake of AI.

The changes come as generative AI is transforming legal research and writing, in all facets of the practice of law. In response, law schools are embracing AI education—from coursework to clinics.

But, increasingly popular AI tools—including those embedded in legal research software—combined with a lack of clear guidelines create the risk of ethical issues. As law schools wrestle with how best to educate students on the technology while controlling for dishonesty, school policies range from explicit bans on generative AI use, to allowing professors to set their own rules within limits.

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2024 IFA International Tax Student Writing Award; Call For Entrants In 2025 Competition

The winners of the International Fiscal Association's 2024 International Tax Student Writing Competition are:

Emily Lawson (Temple), EITC For ITIN-Holders: Bilateral International Tax Treaty Nondiscrimination Articles To The Rescue 

Faculty Sponsor: Alice Abreu 

The field of international tax stands as one of the most complicated and intricate parts of the tax law, and the study of the interpretations of the nondiscrimination article of tax treaties is no exception to that general observation. Leading tax treaty scholars have described the nondiscrimination article as “a most confusing area of the tax law.”188 However, the IRS interpretations and positions on the importance of residency make clear that the nondiscrimination article requires equal treatment of US citizens and Resident Aliens. The residency factor analysis would provide a sound argument for an undocumented Resident Alien—who otherwise qualifies for the EITC and is a national of a treaty-partner state—to seek redress from the IRS in the form of a refund suit or if necessary, escalating through the mutual agreement procedure provided in the treaty.

Even without a treaty, undocumented immigrants without SSNs should be able to claim the EITC if they otherwise qualify. Consider again the two identical taxpayers described above. Both live and work in this country, support their families, and pay taxes but only one of them—the SSN-holder—has been deemed worthy of EITC support. The disparate treatment of ITIN-holders was on full display during the COVID-19 pandemic as ITIN-holders were denied stimulus payments. Accordingly, some US states began to take notice of this injustice, like California and Colorado, and expanded their state-level EITC to ITIN-holders. Since 2020, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington have all expanded their EITC to include ITIN-holders.

The states that have expanded their EITC recognize the value of supporting immigrant workers and their families. California governor, Gavin Newsom, described the expanded EITC as providing “a critical boost to undocumented and mixed-status families across the state, stimulat[ing] the economy and make[ing] us all stronger in the face of economic uncertainty.” He rightly went on to say, “these Californians are taxpayers and should be treated like taxpayers, eligible for the same credits, and pay the same tax rates.”193 Congress should follow suit in expanding the federal EITC to include ITIN-holders not only to comply with tax treaties but more importantly, in recognition of the contributions of undocumented immigrants who deserve fair treatment.

Seth Stowe (Virginia), Circularity and Creditability: Breaking Down Notice 2023-80

Faculty Sponsor: Ruth Mason

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Tax Workshops: Zhang At Missouri, Thomas At Duke, Evans At Toronto

Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) presents The Other Taxation at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

Native Americans pay taxes. The territories do not. Both live with the legacy of American imperialism. Both seek the elusive fiscal self-governance and autonomy promised by Congress. The Supreme Court—through preemption, the plenary-power doctrine, and tax interpretive principles—has hollowed out the Native tax base, forcing tribes to compete fiercely with Congress, states, and localities for revenue. By contrast, territorial residents pay no federal or state taxes by edicts of Congress and geography. This Article argues that the conceptual underpinnings of the divergent tax treatment of tribes and territories are unsound. Under a more robust vision of fiscal autonomy, judicial limits on Native tax sovereignty are misguided. The territories’ wide latitude in designing revenue streams merits heightened scrutiny. While imperfect, a uniform, nonrefundable federal income-tax credit for tribal and territorial taxes paid is a promising path forward. This Article thus provides the first systematic study of subfederal taxation beyond states and localities—the “other” American taxation often overlooked in scholarship.

Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina; Google Scholar) presents Tax and the Myth of the Family Farm, 110 Iowa L. Rev. ___ (2024), at Duke tomorrow as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:

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Federal Judge Questions Wayne State's Refusal To Allow Blind Law Student To Take Classes Online

Following up on my previous post, Blind Law Student Sues Wayne State For Failure To Accommodate Her Disability:  Law360, Law School's Remote Learning Stance Baffles Mich. Judge:

A Michigan federal judge said Thursday it "makes no sense" that Wayne State University Law School couldn't allow a student with a disability to attend classes virtually, pressing an attorney for the university as to why the school couldn't do so, considering it had gone fully remote during the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. District Judge Robert White said it "makes no sense to me in the post-Covid climate" that remote learning would be a fundamental alteration to the education the school provides, when students were fully or predominately remote for an extended period during the pandemic. The judge said he was having a hard time understanding how Hind Omar's request to do distance learning would be an unreasonable accommodation.

The university had claimed Omar's request to attend classes virtually would impose a fundamental alteration on the law school's program, which included the interactive, participation-based method of Socratic teaching. The Americans with Disabilities Act does not require institutions to provide accommodations that would impose a fundamental alteration to the program.

"If Wayne State conducted Socratic methods over Zoom or … whatever hosting software … for years, it's hard to understand there's this magical substantive difference that takes place between one student learning virtually," the judge said.

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Tahk: A Tale Of Two Credits

Susannah Camic Tahk (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), A Tale of Two Credits: 

This Essay considers the relationship between the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit in an era where the child tax credit has taken center stage. Accounts of the U.S. welfare state often conceive of its political support as inherently limited. Programs with anti-poverty missions face a restricted supply of legislative interest and public regard. In the CTC and the EITC though, the tax code currently incorporates two major anti-poverty programs. To what extent do the two programs compete for political resources? Insofar as they do, which is winning, and why? How might we expect their relative trajectories to move in the future? This Essay investigates those questions using legislative history, program data, and a novel survey experiment.

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Teaching Law In The Age of Generative AI

John Bliss (Denver; Google Scholar), Teaching Law in the Age of Generative AI, 64 Jurimetrics 111 (2024): 

With the rise of large language models capable of passing law school exams and the Uniform Bar Exam, how should legal educators prepare their students for an age of transformative technological change? As text-generating AI is being integrated in legal research platforms and word processing software, which automate the drafting of legal documents based on human prompts, lawyers are increasingly adopting this technology as a standard tool of legal research and writing. This Article explores the implications of these developments for legal education, focusing on pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment.

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The Best Law Schools For Practical Training

The Best Law Schools For Practical Training, preLaw (Spring 2025):

Preparing students for practice is the signature goal of many law schools. We spotlight 64 schools that excel when it comes to providing hands-on, practical experience through clinics, externships and other offerings. ...

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ABA Tax Section Hosts Webinar Today On Careers In Tax Law

The ABA Tax Section hosts a webinar today at noon ET on Beyond the Code: Careers in Tax Law Explained (register): 

Join us for an engaging webinar featuring three experienced tax practitioners as they share their career journeys, offer insights into the world of tax law, and provide advice for law students exploring this dynamic and rewarding field. This is your chance to hear directly from professionals about the opportunities and challenges of working in tax law—and to ask your burning questions about the profession. Don't miss this opportunity to gain invaluable career advice and inspiration!

Speakers: 

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Tax Workshops: Strain At Georgetown, Kysar At San Diego

Michael Strain (American Enterprise Institute) presents Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift Toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy at Georgetown as part of the Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Brian Galle and Day Manoli. 

The Trump–Pence and Biden–Harris administrations enthusiastically embraced protectionism. Each administration explicitly argued for a break from the bipartisan consensus of recent decades that has been generally supportive of free trade and of allowing markets to shape US industrial and employment composition. But the protectionism of the Trump and Biden administrations has not succeeded and likely will not succeed at meeting its goals: they have caused manufacturing employment to decline, not to increase; they have not reduced the overall trade deficit; they have not led to a substantial decoupling of the US and Chinese economies. More fundamentally, the goals that have not been met are wrongheaded: policymakers should not pay inordinate attention to manufacturing employment, and the trade deficit is a poor guide to economic policy. Finally, these wrongheaded goals often rest on fundamental economic misperceptions: free trade is not a policy to create jobs; it is a policy to increase productivity, wages, and consumption. The balance of the evidence suggests that free trade, including trade with China, has not reduced employment. Of course, trade has been disruptive. But populist policies adopted in response will hurt workers, not help them.

Rebecca Kysar (Fordham; Google Scholar) delivers the annual Richard Crawford Pugh Lecture on Tax Law & Policy at San Diego today on The Stakes of the Global Tax Deal For International Economic Governance, 77 Tax L. Rev. ___ (2024) (reviewed by Adam Rosenzweig (Washington University) here):

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Former George Mason Law Prof Says He's ‘Fully Vindicated,’ But He Faces Possible Sanctions Under Anti-SLAPP Statute

ABA Journal, Former George Mason University Law Prof Says He's ‘Fully Vindicated’ After ‘Relatively Modest’ Defamation Suit Settlement:

A former professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School has reached a settlement in his defamation lawsuit against two former students who alleged that he abused his power to initiate sexual relationships with them when they were law students. ...

Wright had maintained that the relationships were consensual, and the two women were “scorned former lovers.” In a statement released to Law360, he said he is “relieved to have been fully vindicated. The evidence has made it undeniably clear that the relationships in question were consensual from the start. I remain fully committed to defending my reputation and will not hesitate to take further legal action if necessary to hold accountable those responsible for false accusations.”

National Law Journal, In Settlement on Eve of Trial, Ex-GMU Scalia Law Professor Ends Defamation Lawsuit Against Accuser:

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Trump DEI Mandate And Staff Cuts Threaten IRS Effort To End Racial Bias

Bloomberg, IRS Effort to End Racial Bias Threatened by Trump DEI Mandate:

Diane Lim hadn’t even finished putting together her team at the Treasury Department’s Equity Hub before she got the notice from the Trump administration forcing her group to go on administrative leave within days of the January inauguration.

The Treasury Equity Hub is one casualty of President Donald Trump’s executive order to end federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and eliminating it means there’s one less group of people working to end racial bias in audits—a problem researchers uncovered in 2023 that alarmed congressional Democrats. Trump’s sweeping executive order likely stalled efforts to fix that bias, which might perpetuate an unequal tax system and erode taxpayers’ trust, tax professionals said.

And now the goal to cut the IRS workforce in half complicates the racial bias work further.

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State Bar Of California Announces Remediation Actions For The February Bar Exam And Plans For The July Bar Exam

Following up on Sunday's post, California Bar Recommends Provisional Licensure For All Who Failed And Withdrew From The February Bar Exam:  ABA Journal, State Bar of California Considers Provisional Licenses for February Bar Exam Takers:

The State Bar of California’s Committee of Bar Examiners has placed the option of provisional licenses for candidates who fail or withdrew from the February California bar exam on the table. ...

[T]he ongoing outcry by February bar candidates concerning a variety of issues—including delayed start times, technical glitches, grammatical and factual errors in the questions, rampant cheating, proctors arguing and fellow test-takers screaming out of frustration—has forced the state bar to consider remedies.

Reuters, California Bar Says No Quick Fix for Botched Exam:

There will be no swift resolution to California’s bar exam mess, it seems. The State Bar of California cannot make decisions about how to deal with the test scores on its disastrous February exam for at least nine weeks, the time it takes to grade the exams, bar staff and standardized test experts said on Friday.

California State Bar Email (Mar. 14, 2025):

Dear Person,

Today, the State Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners (CBE) met to discuss the February 2025 bar exam and possible remediation efforts. Below are the key updates from today’s meeting:

Remediation Efforts

• Provisional Licensure Recommendation: The committee resolved to recommend "to the Board of Trustees that the Supreme Court expand the Provisional Licensure Program to include test takers who took the February 2025 bar exam or who withdrew from the February 2025 bar exam.” A specially set meeting of the Board of Trustees will be scheduled to consider the recommendation.
• Score Adjustments: The committee also took action to make it possible for it to recommend score adjustments to the Supreme Court as soon as possible, resolving “that if the timing for making a recommendation on any scoring adjustment for the February 2025 Bar Exam does not align with a regularly scheduled meeting of the committee, and a meeting of the committee cannot be timely scheduled, the committee delegates authority to make a recommendation on scoring adjustments to the Chair and Vice Chair.” The resolution also states that “any such action shall be guided by the mission of public protection.” The State Bar’s psychometricians presented to the committee possible adjustments that address the issues faced during the exam. Additional time is needed to complete analyses to determine what may be most appropriate.

The committee also discussed:

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Summer Associate Hiring Hit All-Time Low In 2024; 78% Of 2025 Summer Associate Offers Were Made Before August 1

Reuters, Law Firms Chopped Summer Associate Jobs to Record Low and Recruited Earlier Than Ever, Report Shows:

Law firm summer associate hiring hit an all-time low in 2024, as firms took a "conservative" recruiting approach, according to the National Association for Law Placement.

The total number of summer associate offers was down slightly compared with the 11-year low of 2023, while the median number of summer associate offers per law firm office fell to six in 2024 from seven in 2023 — the lowest since NALP began tracking that figure in 1993. The average number of summer associate offers, which law firms made to second-year law students, held steady at 22. ...

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Wallace & Davis: Brief Of Amici Curiae Tax Professors In South Carolina Amazon Case

Clint Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar) & Tessa Davis (South Carolina), Brief of Amici Curiae Tax Law Professors for the South Carolina Supreme Court in Support of Respondent: 

In this appeal, Petitioner Amazon Services, LLC challenges the holding of the Administrative Law Court, as affirmed by the Court of Appeals, that Amazon is a “retailer” or “seller” under the South Carolina tax statute that was in effect prior to 2019. That holding properly confirmed the authority of Respondent South Carolina Department of Revenue to collect sales tax from Amazon for retail sales of third-party merchant-owned products on Amazon’s website.

Amazon has attempted to advance an ahistorical, one-size-fits-all litigation and business strategy that has worked for Amazon in other states—but it has done so here with little or no regard for the specific legal context in South Carolina.

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Saito Posts Two Tax Papers On SSRN

Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Tax Contrarians, 58 U. Mich. J.L. Reform ___ (2026): 

Taxation is an important part of democratic society, and recent work has focused on how tax aids democracy and the lack of democratic processes in the development of tax policy. One of the concerns is that a loss of democracy in tax policy making processes amplifies certain voices that in turn bend the tax system to their desires and further entrench their power.

But much of the discussion on democracy has focused on areas outside the important development of administrative guidance. This article proposes an intervention to address these concerns. Drawing on some of the literature in administrative law and democratic governance, it proposes a substantive regulatory contrarian within the Department of Treasury organized around the ideals of democratic equality and engaging those who are currently not heard in the process of developing administrative guidance. The contrarian would occupy a role of both advocate and bridge, communicating with these outside groups of matters within the agencies and noting when certain asks are unworkable. It also would be required to consult with the IRS and Treasury before they issue regulations and have the ability to comment on administrative guidance. Furthermore, should the contrarian provide clear reasoning and demonstrate strong engagement with outside groups, and should Treasury and the IRS adopt significant parts of the contrarian’s proposals, it should serve as a means to persuade courts in supporting Treasury’s outcomes. 

While it is a partial and moderate solution, the contrarian could increase participation and likely shift outcomes, especially when paired with interventions other scholars and advocates have proposed. This proposal helps to increase the democratic values within our tax system and its policy making process. 

Endowing Democratic Equality in Taxation, 63 Hous. L. Rev. __ (2026): 

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WSJ: The Competition To Get Into Law School Is Brutal This Year

Following up on this morning's post, 80% Through The Fall 2025 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Up 20% (Black Applicants Are Up 30%):  Wall Street Journal, The Competition to Get Into Law School Is Brutal This Year:

Applications are surging as students seek stability in a difficult job market.

A weakening white-collar job market and a contentious political climate are fueling interest in law school, leading to one of the most competitive years for would-be law students in recent memory.

The number of applicants to the nation’s nearly 200 law schools is up 20.5% compared with last year. Georgetown University Law Center alone received 14,000 applications to fill 650 spots, while the University of Michigan Law School now has more applications than at any point in its 166 years of existence.

When Michigan Law’s admissions dean, Sarah Zearfoss, shared the numbers with faculty members, “The whole room gasped,” she said.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, California Bar Retake Changes Yet Again As It Moves In Person
• ABA Journal, DEI Standard Prompts Florida To Reconsider ABA Accreditation
• ABA Journal, More First-Time Bar Candidates Passed Exam In 2024, New ABA Data Shows
• ABA Journal, Law Prof Suspended Over Exam Question, Class Discussion Can Sue For First Amendment Retaliation, 7Th Circuit Says
• ABA Journal, Texas Commits To NextGen Bar Exam Starting In 2028, NCBE Says
• ABA Journal, Trump Order Blocks Public Service Loan Forgiveness For Employees Of ‘Activist Organizations’
• America: The Jesuit Review, Trump’s War on DEI Reaches Georgetown Law

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Infanti: Taxation And Slavery In Colonial America

Anthony C. Infanti (Pittsburgh; Google Scholar), The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press 2025): 

The Human Toll documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize enslaved persons, taxing them alongside valuable commodities upon their forced arrival and then as wealth-generating assets in the hands of slaveholders. Anthony C. Infanti examines how taxation also proved to be an important component for subjugating and controlling enslaved persons, both through its shaping of the composition of new arrivals to the colonies and through its funding of financial compensation to slaveholders for the destruction of their “property” to ensure their cooperation in the administration of capital punishment. The variety of tax mechanisms chosen to fund slaveholder compensation payments conveyed messages about who was thought to benefit from―and, therefore, who should shoulder the burden of―slaveholder compensation while opening a revealing window into these colonial societies.

While the story of colonial tax law is intrinsically linked to advancing slavery and racism, Infanti reveals how several colonies used the power of taxation as a means of curtailing the slave trade. Though often self-interested, these efforts show how taxation can be used not only in the service of evil but also to correct societal injustices. Providing a fascinating account of slavery’s economic entrenchment through the history of American tax law, The Human Toll urges us to consider the lessons that fiscal history holds for those working in the reparations movement today.

Reviews

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80% Through The Fall 2025 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Up 20% (Black Applicants Are Up 30%)

We are now 80% of the way through Fall 2025 law school admissions season. The number of law school applicants reported by LSAC is up 20.5% compared to last year at this time:

190 of the 196 law schools are experiencing an increase in applications. Applications are up +40% or more at 28 law schools:

Applicants are up in every region, and are up the most in Northwest (+29.6%), New England (+26.3%), and Northeast (+24.5%):

Applicants' LSAT scores are up +35.4% in the 170-180 band, +24.0% in the 160-169 band, +13.4% in the 150-159 band, and +13.6% in the 120-149 band:

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Brooklyn Symposium: Brad Borden And Section 1031

• Bradley T. Borden (Brooklyn; Google Scholar), Tax-Law Analysis Applied to Section 1031 Exchanges & Proximate Business Transactions, 18 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 351 (2024)
• Bradley T. Borden (Brooklyn; Google Scholar), Tax-Law Analysis, 18 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 385 (2024)
• Bradley T. Borden (Brooklyn; Google Scholar), The Section 1031 Exchange Requirement, 18 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 407 (2024)

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• California Bar Blocked Law School Deans And Professors From Vetting Troubled Bar Exam
• Viswanathan: Damage Award Taxation And Distributive Justice
• Law Profs’ Generative AI Sandbox
• Richard Pomp Receives University Of Connecticut Distinguished Faculty Research Scholar Award

Sunday:

• WSJ Op-Ed: Dostoevsky’s (And Our) Struggle With Faith
• Dispatch Faith: Make Asceticism Great Again?
• Free Press Debate: Does The West Need A Religious Revival?
• Can Faith-Based Colleges (And Law Schools) Use Religious Freedom As A Defense Against Trump’s Attacks On DEI?
• NY Times: Yale Law School Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her Of Terrorist Link
• California Bar Recommends Provisional Licensure For All Who Failed And Withdrew From The February Bar Exam
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

WSJ Op-Ed: Dostoevsky’s (And Our) Struggle With Faith

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Struggle With Faith, by Gary Saul Morson (Northwestern):

The Russian novelist accepted the idea that belief includes doubt and embraces wonder.

As Fyodor Dostoevsky was taken to Siberia as a political prisoner in 1850, Natalya Fonvizina gave him a copy of the New Testament, the only book prisoners were allowed to have. It sustained him in adversity and led him to faith. Five years later, when Fonvizina was deeply depressed, Dostoevsky consoled her in what is doubtless the best-known letter in Russian literature.

Recalling his own days of despair, Dostoevsky explained that “at such moments one thirsts for faith like ‘parched grass,’ and one finds it at last because the truth becomes evident in unhappiness.” The faith Dostoevsky found resembled not an unshakable conviction but a struggle with doubt. “I will tell you that I am a child of this century, a child of disbelief and doubt,” he wrote. “I am that today and (I know) will remain so until the grave.”

Since the rise of modern science, educated people have often found it difficult to believe with calm certainty the ideal of their medieval predecessors. Like Dostoevsky, they experience a painful internal conflict. “How much terrible torture this thirst for faith has cost me even now, which is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I find against it,” Dostoevsky wrote.

Readers of “The Brothers Karamazov” will recognize this same tortured struggle in its intellectual hero, Ivan.

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Dispatch Faith: Make Asceticism Great Again?

Dispatch Faith:  Make Asceticism Great Again?, by Michael Reneau (Managing Editor, The Dispatch) & Nadya Williams (Ph.D., Princeton; Managing Editor, Current; Author, Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (2024)):

Michael Reneau
This week marked the beginning of Lent, the 40-day season leading into Easter. While many Catholics and Orthodox Christians observe formal fasts during this season, in recent years Christians of various traditions have begun observing fasts of one sort or another.

Scholar and writer Nadya Williams writes this week that those practices have as their root the asceticism practiced by early Christians, some of whom retreated into nearby deserts to forgo convenience and strengthen their spiritual health. But a focus on seclusion and piety may teach Christians the wrong lessons about Lent, Williams argues.

Nadya Williams
One morning in Egypt, sometime around AD 270, a Christian man quietly departed into the desert. In Egypt, of course, the desert was ever near, relentlessly encroaching with its dry winds threatening the fragile crops around the narrow fertile band of land around the Nile River. This oasis of life had been Rome’s bread basket for centuries, surrounded by thousands of miles of merciless sand. Walking into an abandoned Roman fort on the edge of civilization, the man shut the gates from the inside for the next 20 years, subsisting on a few loaves of bread lowered down to him twice a year.

So it was that a fort built centuries earlier to protect the edges of Roman territories from unromanized tribes beyond the frontier became the willing prison of this ascetic, Anthony, whose deepest longing was time alone with God, without the company of people or any comforts to distract his mind or flesh from this goal.

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Free Press Debate: Does The West Need A Religious Revival?

The Free Press, Does the West Need a Religious Revival?:

Ross Douthat and Ayaan Hirsi Ali face off against Michael Shermer and Adam Carolla in our latest live debate.

For the past 50 years, to be smart and sophisticated also meant being secular. The New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris—dominated intellectual circles, scoffing at faith as an outdated superstition, a social illness to be eradicated. And for a time, they seemed to be winning. In 1972, 90 percent of Americans identified as Christian. By 2022, that number had plummeted to 64 percent, while the religiously unaffiliated surged from 5 percent to 30 percent. The trend was similar across Europe.

But as churches emptied, people began searching for meaning elsewhere—politics, activism, astrology, and therapy started to fill the void God once occupied. And now, after decades of decline, faith is creeping back. A new Pew study suggests Christian identification in America may be ticking upward again. And a recent piece by The Free Press’s Peter Savodnik showed that this revival is being led by many of our leading intellectuals.

What’s going on? Could it be that humanity needs religion? Last week, 1,300 people packed into the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, for a Free Press debate on this subject.

In the audience were a monk from Marblehead, Massachusetts; a couple from Portland; a father and daughter from Toronto; metalworkers from Detroit; and Entourage star Adrian Grenier. All of them made the trip to Austin to watch Ross Douthat and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who argued yes) face off against Michael Shermer and Adam Carolla (who argued no) to hash out the question: Does the West need a religious revival?

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Can Faith-Based Colleges (And Law Schools) Use Religious Freedom To Defend Against Trump’s Attacks On DEI?

Inside Higher Ed, Religious Freedom as a Defense for DEI?:

Georgetown University cited its Jesuit mission in responding to Trump administration critiques of DEI. Could religious freedom protect against attacks on diversity practices?

Last month, amid a Trump administration broadside against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, government officials took aim at Georgetown University’s law school.

“It has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School continues to teach DEI. This is unacceptable,” interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin wrote in a letter.

Martin announced he had launched “an inquiry into this” and asked Georgetown law school officials, “If DEI is found in your courses or teaching in anyway [sic], will you move swiftly to remove it?” He added that students and others “affiliated with a law school or university” that “continues to teach and utilize DEI” would not be hired “for our fellows program, our summer internship” or other jobs.

Martin’s letter, which was sent on Feb. 17 and quickly became public, prompted shock and outrage, with many observers noting that it was a clear affront to First Amendment rights at Georgetown. It also drew a quick—and pointed—response from the law school.

Georgetown Law dean William Treanor invoked both the First Amendment and the tenets of Catholic faith in his March 6 response to Martin, noting that the government cannot control curriculum.

“As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding,” Treanor wrote in a response that soon spread online. “For us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution.”

Given that multiple institutions have already complied with Trump directives to unwind DEI initiatives, despite numerous outstanding legal questions, Treanor’s response stood out as an uncommon example of a university holding its ground. It also raised a unique question for religiously affiliated institutions: Does religious freedom offer a defense against Trump’s attacks on DEI efforts?

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NY Times: Yale Law School Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her Of Terrorist Link

New York Times, Yale Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her of Terrorist Link:

Helyeh Doutaghi, a scholar in international law, began a new job in 2023 as the deputy director of a project at Yale Law School.

As an activist who had championed pro-Palestinian causes in both published papers and public appearances, Dr. Doutaghi seemed to fit into the left-leaning mission of the Law and Political Economy Project, which promoted itself as working for “economic, racial and gender equality.”

Last week, though, she was abruptly barred from Yale’s campus in New Haven, Conn., and placed on administrative leave. She was told not to advertise her affiliation with the university, where she had also served as an associate research scholar.

Yale officials cited the reason as allegations that she was tied to entities subject to U.S. sanctions. It was an apparent reference to Samidoun, a pro-Palestinian group placed on the U.S. sanctions list last year, after the Treasury Department designated it a “sham charity” raising money for a terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The decision came three days after a news site, powered at least in part by artificial intelligence, published a story about Dr. Doutaghi’s connections to the group.

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California Bar Recommends Provisional Licensure For All Who Failed And Withdrew From The February Bar Exam

The Recorder, State Bar Examiners Endorse Provisionally Licensing Thousands Who Registered for Botched Exam:

The state bar's committee of bar examiners said provisional licenses should be offered to anyone who withdrew from the tech-troubled exam, not just those who fail the test.

Bloomberg Law, California Bar Gives Nod to Temporary License Fix After Exam:

The California Committee of Bar Examiners recommended Friday that the state’s highest court expand a pre-license program to people who took the poorly administered February 2025 bar exam.

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is quite a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with new papers debuting on the list at #3, #4, and #5.

1. [623 Downloads]  The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich, by Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar)
2. [365 Downloads]  The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, by Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University)
3. [209 Downloads]  Public International Law and Tax Law: A Fair and Equitable Nexus in International Taxation, by Pasquale Pistone (IBFD, Vienna; Google Scholar), Sam van der Vlugt (IBFD, Erasmus; Google Scholar) & Mariya Serafimova (European Court of Justice)
4. [195 Downloads]  The Tariffs Are Coming! The Tariffs Are Coming!, by Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar)
5. [166 Downloads]  Stock Dividends, The Supreme Court, And The Great Crash Of 1929, by John Brooks (Fordham; Google Scholar) (reviewed by Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) here)

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), 2025-26 U.S. News Law School Rankings
2. ABA Journal, Attorney General Bondi Threatens ABA If It Does Not Eliminate DEI Law School Accreditation Standard
3. Bloomberg Op-Ed (Stephen Carter (Yale)), Legal Experts Agree: Georgetown Law Dean Gave Master Class On How To Fight Trump’s Anti-DEI Crusade
4. Press Release, New ABA Bar Data: Pass Rate Increased 3 Percentage Points For First-Time Takers; 6 Law Schools Fell Short of 75% Accreditation Threshold
5. Bloomberg Law, Seventh Circuit Revives Chicago Law Professor’s Free Speech Retaliation Claim
6. Washington Post, Georgetown Dean Pushes Back Against U.S. Attorney's Threat To Refuse To Hire Students From Law Schools With ‘DEI’
7. Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (Roland Fryer (Harvard)), Replacing DEI With MEI (Merit, Excellence, Intelligence) Eliminates Bias In The Workplace
8. Law360, Former George Mason Law Prof Drops $108M Lawsuit Against Former Students Who Accused Him Of Sexual Misconduct
9. NY Times Op-Ed (David French), The MAGA Culture War Comes For Georgetown Law School
10. Press Release, ABA Reiterates Suspension Of Law School Diversity Accreditation Standard In Wake Of DOJ Threat If ABA Does Not Eliminate The Standard

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. Tax Workshops: 
   1. Stephen Daly (King's College London) At Oxford, The Rule of Law in Comparative Tax Administration
   2. Hayes Holderness (Richmond) At UC-San Francisco, Multistate Tax Customs
   3. Goldburn Maynard (Indiana-Kelley) At Missouri-Columbia, Penalizing Precarity 
   4. Sean Roh (IRS) at Georgetown, Staying on the Wagon: Estimating Indirect Deterrence Effects from Filing and Payment Compliance Programs
   5. Alex Zhang (Emory) At Columbia, The Other Taxation 
2. CALI, Seeking New Authors To Take Over And Update Three Tax Casebooks
3. Tax Executives Institute, Student Case Competition
4. New York Times, Trump's War On The IRS And 19 Tax Issues Facing Congress
5. Will Danielson Lanier (J.D. & LL.M. 2024, NYU), Math Symbols In The Tax Code
6. ProPublica, How DOGE’s IRS Cuts Threaten To Cost More Than They Will Save
7. William Gale, Oliver Hall & John Sabelhaus (Tax Policy Center), How The Income Tax Affects Black, Hispanic, And White Households
8. Daniel Hemel (NYU), Law And The New Dynamic Public Finance
9. The Tax Lawyer, New Issue
10. David Elkins (Netanya), Review Of Law And The New Dynamic Public Finance By Daniel Hemel (NYU)

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. New York Times (Ruth Graham), The Malcolm Gladwell Of Conservative Christianity
2. Wall Street Journal (Raymond J. de Souza), The Pope vs. JD Vance On Immigration
3. Christianity Today Op-Ed (Ross Douthat), How I Lost My Faith In Atheism
4. The Free Press Op-Ed (Ross Douthat), Everyone Should Believe In God
5. Cameron Fathauer (Schad Law), Saving The Subject: How I Found You When I Almost Lost Me
   Christianity Today Op-Ed (Phoebe Farag Mikhail), Why Christians Fast During Lent

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. 

California Bar Blocked Law School Deans And Professors From Vetting Troubled Bar Exam

The Recorder, State Bar Blocked Law School Academics From Vetting Troubled Bar Exam:

California's state bar last month blocked a group of legal academics from participating in a previously scheduled review of content on the troubled February 2025 bar exam, raising new questions about the material on the licensing test.

About a dozen law school deans and professors had agreed in January, at the state bar's invitation, to scrutinize the exam's multiple-choice questions, essay topics and performance test material as part of a process, known as standard setting. The review, according to an email sent to invitees, would help shape scoring of the licensing exam.

Bar officials confirmed plans for the reviewers to travel to the agency's office in Los Angeles two times, once in March and again in April, to see the questions administered to applicants on the Feb. 26-27 exam.

But in the days that immediately followed the exam, which was marked by widespread technical problems that rendered some examinees unable to finish or even start the test, bar officials called the reviewers and rescinded their invitations. The reason wasn't entirely clear, although it appeared connected to the bar's use of Kaplan North America for the first time ever to write the exam's multiple-choice questions.

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Viswanathan: Damage Award Taxation And Distributive Justice

Manoj Viswanathan (UC-San Francisco; Google Scholar), Damage Award Taxation and Distributive Justice, 109 Cornell L. Rev. __ (2025):

Damage awards are often intended to make plaintiffs whole, yet their tax treatment often undermines this goal. Plaintiffs frequently face unfavorable tax consequences that reduce the net value of their awards, leaving them worse off relative to the position they would have occupied absent the defendant’s wrongful conduct. Despite their significant impact, the tax costs of damage awards remain an overlooked issue in both legal scholarship and judicial decision-making. 

This Article makes several contributions to the discourse on damage award taxation. First, it develops a novel taxonomy of unfavorable tax consequences, systematically categorizing the ways in which tax liabilities can undermine “make whole” remedies. While prior scholarship has primarily focused on the effects of progressive taxation in employment discrimination claims, this Article demonstrates that unfavorable tax consequences affect a much broader range of legal claims. Second, it highlights the disproportionate impact of unfavorable tax consequences on low-income plaintiffs, who are significantly more vulnerable to progressive tax rates and the loss of critical, means-tested tax benefits.

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Law Profs’ Generative AI Sandbox

Three LSU law professors (Will Monroe, Tracy Norton, and Susan Tanner) have launched Law Profs' Generative AI Sandbox:

Empowering & Inspiring Law Professors in the Age of Generative AI
This sandbox is your comprehensive resource for exploring how you might integrate artificial intelligence into law school instruction. Whether you've never tried out generative AI or you're already building your own bots, our sandbox provides tailored resources to help you learn to use generative AI to enhance your teaching and support your students' success.

Discover Your AI Persona
Begin your journey by taking our Generative AI Disposition Survey.

Quick Start: We think one of the best ways to learn about Generative AI is to use it. Here are a few quick guides to introduce you to some of the technology, based on your AI persona:

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Richard Pomp Receives University Of Connecticut Distinguished Faculty Research Scholar Award

UConn Today, Office of the Provost Honors Professor Richard Pomp: 

The UConn Office of the Provost has honored UConn Law Professor Richard Pomp with the 2024 Distinguished Faculty Research Scholar Award.

The recognition is among the Provost Awards for Excellence in Community-Engaged Scholarship, which celebrate every year the significant efforts of faculty, staff, students, teams, and community partners who work to address critical community issues through collaborative, mutually beneficial, and creative exchange of knowledge and resources.

The award is the latest of several recent high-level honors for Pomp, the Alva P. Loiselle Professor of Law and a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. In 2023, he was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Connecticut Law School Alumni Association.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Eyal-Cohen Reviews Harpaz's Global Tax Wars In The Digital Era

This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar), Global Tax Wars in the Digital Era, 75 Am. U. L. Rev. __ (2025).

Global tax has long been a tag-a-war in the international policy battleground for competing economic interests, but the rise of digitalization has intensified these tensions. The international tax system was designed for an economy built on factories and physical assets, not one where trillion-dollar businesses derive profits from digital services that transcend borders. As governments struggle to capture fair tax revenues from multinational companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon that generate billions in revenue across borders without physical presence, traditional tax rules—rooted in the early 20th century—are increasingly inadequate.

In this Article, Harpaz delves into this evolving conflict unpacking the “tax wars” between the Global North and Global South. He argues for a fundamental shift in how global tax rights are allocated toward source-based taxation and proposes a significant economic presence doctrine to modernize the rules governing international tax. 

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• AALS Call For Papers, Reflecting On The Journal of Legal Education
• ABA Journal, ABA Legal Ed Council Suspended Diversity Standard; AG Bondi Wants It Scrapped
• ABA Journal, Furious Bar Candidates Square Off With State Bar of California in Wake of Flubbed Exam
• ABA Press Release, ABA Section of Legal Education Releases Comprehensive Report on Bar Passage Data
• ABA Press Release, ABA Council Reiterates Access to Legal Education Standard Is Suspended
• Bloomberg Law, Law Professor's Claim Over Exam Question Gets Revived on Appeal
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2025-26 U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), New Legal Ed Articles

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