UCLA Hosts A Business And Tax Roundtable For Upcoming Professors (BATR-UP)

UCLA hosts Business and Tax Roundtable for Upcoming Professors: 

The Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law is pleased to announce its first annual Business and Tax Roundtable for Upcoming Professors (“BATR-UP”). This in-person Roundtable will take place at UCLA from Friday evening June 13th through Sunday June 15th.  The program will feature commentary by invited senior scholars as well as an opportunity to meet fellow aspiring scholars while enjoying Los Angeles.

Marilyn Hajj (Virginia), Waiter, Extra Tip, No Tax: A Policy Assessment
Lead Commentator: Joshua Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar)

“Add a tip?” Maybe you just don’t want to—but tipped workers can’t afford for you not to. Across the country, tipped workers are twice as likely to live in poverty as their non-tipped counterparts, yet the government taxes their tips while leaving loopholes for wealthier earners. Now, lawmakers are considering eliminating that tax altogether. While the slogan “no tax on tips” is catchy, does it actually help the workers it claims to benefit? This paper critically examines legislative proposals to eliminate tip taxation, questioning whether they truly alleviate poverty.

Tip taxation has long been overlooked in the literature, which has largely focused on compliance rather than its impact on low-income workers. This oversight has left a critical gap: we know little about how tip taxation affects workers’ economic stability, eligibility for social programs, and financial well-being. Meanwhile, recent legislative efforts—spurred by political promises—claim to put more money into workers’ pockets. But are these proposals well-designed? Do they address the root problems tipped workers face?  This paper makes three key contributions to tax and poverty law.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Saito Reviews Zhang's The Forgotten Attribution Power

This week, Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar), The Forgotten Attribution Power, 135 Yale L.J. ___ (2026).

In deciding Moore v. United States, Justice Kavanaugh discussed that what was really at issue in the case was not anything regarding unrealized income, but rather a question of attribution. In the opinion, he said Congress could choose whether to attribute taxation to the entity or to have it flow-through to the owner. At the time, it felt a bit underdeveloped as an idea. But as Alex Zhang shows in his article, The Forgotten Attribution Power, 135 Yale L. J. ___ (forthcoming 2026), this concept actually has deep roots back to the early years of the modern income tax. It also shows that even after Moore, Congress does have tools, if it wants to exercise them, to attribute income and tax some level of unrealized appreciation.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, Flurry of Moves Aim to Remedy—and Prevent Future—California Bar Exam Disasters
• The Athletic, The Secret To Workplace Happiness: ‘High-Quality Connections’
• Bloomberg Law, Fired Muslim Associate Says Pro-Israel Foley Managing Partner Tanked Her Job
• Catherine Martin Christopher (Texas Tech), Assessing Experiential Education in Law Schools: Toward a Modern Diploma Privilege
• Chronicle of Higher Education, At UC Berkeley, the Faculty Asks Itself, Do Our Critics Have a Point?
• Chronicle of Higher Education Review, Berkeley Profs Say the College Discriminates
• Noah Dahl (pseudonym), Judiciary Whiffs Opportunity To Dispel Appearance of Bias

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Tax Policy In The Trump Administration

• Bloomberg, House GOP Advances Plan to Change Some Provisions in Tax Bill
• Bloomberg, Republican Senators Consider $30,000 SALT Cap in Trump Tax Bill
• Bloomberg, Senate Republicans Plan to Release Major Revisions to Trump’s Tax Bill
• Bloomberg, Supreme Court Backs Tax Court Move to End Woman’s Levy Suit
• Bloomberg, Treasury Proposals Take Aim at Hundreds of Colleges’ Tax Status
• Bloomberg, Trump Tax Bill Would Help the Richest, Hurt the Poorest, CBO Says
• Bloomberg, Why Trump Is Pushing for a Global ‘Revenge’ Tax
• Cato Institute, The New Retaliation Tax, Section 899
• Veronique de Rugy (George Mason), Extending the Trump Tax Cuts Is a Good Idea. But It Won't Deliver 'Big, Beautiful' Economic Growth.

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Assessing Experiential Education In Law Schools: Toward A Modern Diploma Privilege

Catherine Martin Christopher (Texas Tech), Assessing Experiential Education in Law Schools: Toward a Modern Diploma Privilege, 93 Miss. L J. 1137 (2024):

Experiential education is an essential part of legal education because it moves law students from theoretical to practical understanding of the law and its implications. Legal education experts recommend significant experiential education in order to make law graduates practice-ready.1 Practical, experiential skills must be taught, and furthermore, students’ learning must be assessed, so all stakeholders—including employers and clients—can be assured that new attorneys are competent to practice.

Assessing the competence of students, and assessing the institution’s program of legal education, can be particularly daunting when considering experiential education; while knowledge can be assessed objectively, assessing skills is more subjective. Consistent, accurate assessment is particularly important because I believe law faculty are better situated to assess a broader range of competencies, over a more realistic timeframe, than the bar exam and its graders can. 

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The New Glass Ceiling

Andrea Kupfer Schneider (Cardozo), Abigail R. Bogli (Quarles & Brady, Milwaukee) & Hannah L. Chin (School District of Whitefish Bay), The New Glass Ceiling, 2024 Wis. L. Rev. 1687:

Until the last decade, gender inequality in the legal profession was self-evident. Law school classrooms and law firm offices were overwhelmingly filled with men. In recent years, women have outnumbered men in law school classes and reached parity with men among first-year associates. These developments have created the misperception that gender equality has been achieved. In this Article, we challenge this complacency. 

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Northwestern Hosts ABA Tax Section State & Local Tax Symposium Today: New Paradigms, Old Laws

Northwestern hosts a State and Local Tax Symposium on New Paradigms, Old Laws (registration): 

Sponsored by The Tax Lawyer and the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Tax Program

Lead authors will each participate in a 40-minute panel discussion concerning the subject of the author’s article for publication in The Tax Lawyer. Each author will be joined by one or two other tax professionals, from private practice, state government, and academia, for a robust discussion of the topic.

The presentations will be followed by a luncheon and keynote address by two distinguished tax court judges, the Hon. Thomas Fisher and the Hon. Martha Wentworth. After lunch, speakers, and attendees will hear presentations of innovative ideas for the instruction of SALT in law school J.D. and L.L.M. curricula from experienced SALT professors (including practitioner adjunct professors) and participate in discussing ideas for teaching SALT in the classroom. 

Presenters: 

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Associational Rights Versus Nonprofit Transparency: Information Reporting In The Internet Age

Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University), Associational Rights Versus Nonprofit Transparency: Information Reporting in the Internet Age, 2025 U. Ill. L. Rev. ___:

For decades, the nation’s charitable and nonprofit organizations have been required to file an information return, known as the Form 990, with the Internal Revenue Service. Congress mandates that the return be made publicly available. Such information reporting, both to the IRS and to the public, is the cornerstone of the federal government’s approach to assuring that nonprofit organizations are legally compliant. The Supreme Court’s decision in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (APF), however, casts a shadow on the constitutionality of nonprofit reporting requirements. In APF, the Court held unconstitutional California’s effort to require charities to disclose their major donors, finding that compelled disclosure rules presumptively impose a burden on First Amendment associational rights, even for confidential disclosures to the government. The Court also said that compelled disclosure rules are subject to exacting scrutiny and narrow tailoring. The federal nonprofit reporting regime therefore, post-APF, must undergo exacting scrutiny for the first time and may fail under the First Amendment.

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Texas A&M Symposium: Artificial Intelligence In Legal Scholarship

Texas A&M Symposium, The ‘Why’ & How’ of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Scholarship, 11 Texas A&M J. Prop. L. 543-703 (2025):

• Spencer Nayar (J.D. 2025, Texas A&M) & Michael I. Cooper (J.D. 2025, Texas A&M), Foreword: The ‘Why’ & How’ of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Scholarship, 11 Texas A&M L. Rev. 543 (2025)
• Andrew W. Torrance (Kansas; Google Scholar) & Bill Tomlinson (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar), Invasives: The How of Biodiversity Loss, 11 Texas A&M L. Rev. 573 (2025)
• Andrew W. Torrance (Kansas; Google Scholar) & Bill Tomlinson (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar), Overharvesting: The Why of Biodiversity Loss, 11 Texas A&M L. Rev. 615 (2025)
• Andrew W. Torrance (Kansas; Google Scholar) & Bill Tomlinson (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar), Pollution: The What of Biodiversity Loss, 11 Texas A&M L. Rev. 643 (2025)
• Andrew W. Torrance (Kansas; Google Scholar) & Bill Tomlinson (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar), Population: The Who of Biodiversity Law, 11 Texas A&M L. Rev. 673 (2025)

ABA Journal, AI Takes on Starring Role in 4 Articles Published by Law Journal:

The Texas A&M Journal of Property Law has published a collection of four articles on the loss of biodiversity that were drafted with the help of artificial intelligence.

Above the Law covered the project and the footnote that ran with each article. It states that portions of the article “were drafted and/or revised” with the help of ChatGPT and Anthropic’s LLM Claude. All content was reviewed and verified by a research team, the footnote said.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Justice Jackson Just Reset The DEI Debate

New York Times Op-Ed:  Justice Jackson Just Helped Reset the D.E.I. Debate, by David French (Author, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020)):

At the heart of the debate over diversity, equity and inclusion is a question: How much should the law treat a person as an individual rather than as a member of a group?

For a very long time, American law and American institutions answered that question unequivocally. People were defined primarily by the group they belonged to, and if they happened to be Black or Native American or a woman, they were going to enjoy fewer rights, fewer privileges and fewer opportunities than the people who belonged to the categories white and male.

That was — and remains — a grievous injustice. At a minimum, justice demands that a nation and its institutions cease and desist from malicious discrimination. But doesn’t justice demand more? Doesn’t it also require that a nation and its institutions actually try to provide assistance to targeted groups to help increase diversity in employment and education and help targeted groups overcome the systemic effects of centuries of discrimination?

On Thursday the Supreme Court unanimously decided a case that was directly relevant to the latter question, and while the outcome wasn’t surprising, the court’s unanimity — and the identity of the author of the court’s opinion — certainly was.

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NextGen Bar Exam Update Today For Law School Faculty

Registration is closed, but NCBE is offering a second update on Tuesday, July 1.

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ATPI Hosts Webinar Today: Tax Exemption And The New Scrutiny Of Nonprofits

The American Tax Policy Institute hosts a webinar today on Mission at Risk? Tax Exemption and the New Scrutiny of Nonprofits (register): 

This nonpartisan webinar will address the evolving regulatory environment for nonprofit organizations and the challenges they face in maintaining their exempt status amid changing administrative priorities. Experts will examine concerns about heightened scrutiny of organizational language, mission statements, and program activities, along with questions about endowment taxation and compliance requirements. Panelists will offer practical guidance for nonprofit leaders and advisors on navigating regulatory uncertainty while maintaining organizational integrity and mission focus. The discussion will place current developments in historical context and provide forward-looking strategies for nonprofit governance, compliance, and risk management in a complex regulatory environment.

Panelists: 

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Passive Income Withholding: $200 Billion In Revenue Without Raising Taxes

Jay A. Soled (Rutgers; Google Scholar) & James Alm (Tulane; Google Scholar), Passive Income Withholding: $200 Billion in Revenue Without Raising Taxes, 187 Tax Notes Fed. 1163 (May 19, 2025):

In this article, Soled and Alm propose a reform under which estimated taxes on investment income would, by default, be automatically withheld by the institution making the payment, which they argue would improve compliance and raise substantial tax revenue.

Conclusion
Tax reform is coming, but no one knows the exact shape it will take. At least three possible agendas are on tap: tax cuts, relief of administrative and compliance burdens, and deficit reduction. Of course, equity considerations are also on the agenda of many policymakers.

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Foley & Lardner Says It Rescinded Job Offer To Muslim Georgetown Grad Because She Condoned Hamas Attack On Israel

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Bloomberg Law, Fired Muslim Associate Says Pro-Israel Foley Managing Partner Tanked Her Job:

A Muslim summer associate who was fired by Foley & Lardner over Gaza comments claims that the firm’s late chair was instrumental in her dismissal.

Jinan Chehade said that former managing partner Stan Jaspan “admitted that he — not CEO Doogal — made the decision to revoke” her offer despite being told that she “had unequivocally condemned the Hamas attacks,” according to a filing made Wednesday in opposition to Foley’s motion for summary judgment.

Chehade claims that Jaspan revoked her offer over the objections of several other Foley & Lardner partners and staff, including its DEI chief Eileen Ridley and its CEO Daljit Doogal.

Bloomberg Law, Foley Rejects Claim Former Leader Had Role in Firing Arab Lawyer:

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NCBE Releases Blueprint For NextGen Bar Exam Adopted In 40 U.S. Jurisdictions Beginning In July 2026

Press Release, NCBE Publishes NextGen UBE Blueprint for July 2026–February 2027, Legal Research Performance Task:

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) has published the NextGen UBE Blueprint: July 2026–February 2027. The Blueprint provides exam specifications for the July 2026 and February 2027 administrations of the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam (NextGen UBE). To date, 40 US jurisdictions have announced adoption of the new exam.

Key information found in the Blueprint includes

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UC-Berkeley Faculty Ask: Do Trump And His Allies Have A Point About Higher Education?

Chronicle of Higher Education, At UC Berkeley, the Faculty Asks Itself, Do Our Critics Have a Point?:

President Trump’s second administration has targeted higher education with funding cuts, charging that colleges — particularly prestigious ones — have let antisemitism go unchecked and progressive ideology run amok.

The sector’s leaders have responded by weighing whether to give ground or fight back. Lingering inside that question is another uncomfortable one: Do Trump and his allies have a point?

At the University of California at Berkeley, two professors recently put a version of that query to their peers via survey. The results — obtained by The Chronicle — cut against the stereotype of Berkeley’s campus as an ultra-progressive monolith. Rather, they conveyed complicated feelings among a subset of the faculty about whether and where higher education has gone wrong, and how to course-correct if it has. While some respondents did not think Berkeley should recalibrate on certain issues because of Trump, they did think their university should recalibrate, period.

As one unnamed professor put it: “Over the years, I’ve been confronted by various scenarios that have caused me to mutter to myself, ‘This has gone way too far.’ Do we really have to acknowledge that we are holding a conference on stolen land when it takes place over Zoom?”

Chronicle of Higher Education Review, The Review: Berkeley Profs Say the College Discriminates:

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Stetson Seeks To Hire An Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Prof

Stetson University College of Law: 

Stetson University College of Law, Florida's first law school, invites applicants from entry-level and lateral candidates for several faculty positions. Our hiring priorities focus on candidates who are enthusiastic about enhancing our existing institutional strengths and helping us develop new areas of excellence. We welcome applications from qualified candidates across all areas and specializations. Specifically, we seek individuals with expertise in business law, civil procedure, constitutional law, criminal law, legal research and writing, professional responsibility, and tax law.

The Faculty Appointments Committee will review applicants until all positions are filled. The review of lateral applicants will begin in May and will continue on a rolling basis throughout the summer. ...

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Wallace Presents The Populist Income Tax Today At Oxford

Clint Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar) presents The Populist Income Tax at Oxford today as part of its Centre for Business Taxation Seminars:

The populist income tax refers to the short-lived U.S. law that was enacted in 1894 at the behest of members of Congress who identified as populists. The tax was motivated by two distinctive concerns, one focused on efficiency, and another focused on democracy. First, populists advocating for the income tax were informed by an argument in favor of targeting the “unearned increment” from investments. While the conventional case against the income tax in that era—and in favor of the existing tariff regime—was tenuous in terms of economics (even by the standards of the day, and more so through a contemporary lens), the populists’ rhetoric related to taxing so-called unearned gains (rents in modern parlance) reveals a surprisingly sophisticated concept of efficiency. Second, the tax reform movement was infused with a very particular concern about inequality and democracy: specifically, that wealth inequality was stunting democratic decision making. This point was evidenced in the popular imagination by industrialists using their unfathomably enormous wealth to direct government to their own purposes, including in the efforts to fight tax reform, which succeeded in 1895 when the tax was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

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The Impact Of Post-Tenure Review On Faculty Productivity And Retention

Simon Quach (USC; Google Scholar) & Zhengyi Yu (USC; Google Scholar), Fight or Flight: The Impact of Post-Tenure Evaluations on Faculty Productivity and Selection:

This paper examines the labor market effects of Florida's 2022 post-tenure review policy, which weakened tenure protections at public universities. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we compare faculty outcomes in Florida to nearby states. We find the policy increased faculty exits-particularly among high-performing researchers-indicating a brain drain rather than improved selection. Additionally, we detect no productivity gains among incumbents and observe a decline in the research output of new hires. Overall, the findings suggest that reducing tenure protections negatively affects the research capacity and competitiveness of public universities.

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IRS Releases 2024 Data Book

IR-2025-63, IRS Releases Fiscal Year 2024 Data Book Describing Agency’s Activities:

The Internal Revenue Service today issued its annual Data Book detailing the agency's activities during fiscal year 2024 (Oct. 1, 2023 – Sept. 30, 2024). This year’s edition marks the publication’s 30-year anniversary; the first Data Book covered fiscal years 1993 and 1994 and was available in 1995. Prior to 1993, the IRS published annual reports, which date back to 1863. The Data Book provides a fiscal year statistical overview of the agency’s operations including returns received, revenue collected, taxpayer services provided, tax returns examined (audits), efforts to collect unpaid taxes and other details about the work of the IRS.

SOI Tax Stats — IRS Data Book:

Highlights of this year's Data Book

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Without OCI, Who Decides Whether A Law Student Passes The Vibe Check? Increasingly, It’s AI

Law.com, Without OCI, Who Decides Whether a Law Student Passes the Vibe Check? Increasingly, It’s AI:

Prior to the 2020 recruiting season, law students vying for Big Law jobs went into the fall of their 2L year preparing for the types of screening questions they expected hiring partners to ask during on-campus interviews. What are your interests? Why our firm? To what do you attribute your success?

That application process has looked quite different for thousands of 1L students who applied for the same type of 2L summer associate positions this spring. In addition to law students interacting with firms directly, remotely, and sooner than they used to, many students applying to Big Law firms in the post-pandemic era are taking artificial intelligence-backed assessments and quizzes, or having their resumes scraped and fed into AI-powered algorithms.

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JD-Next, GRE Gaining Popularity For Law School Admittance

Law.com, JD-Next, GRE Gaining Popularity for Law School Admittance:

While most students are still being admitted to law school using the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), 92 law schools, including a number of top-ranked programs, admitted students in their 2023-24 class with the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), while seven admitted students with the JD-Next exam.

Out of 39,433 students enrolled in law school in the 2023-2024 academic year, 38,709 (98%) were admitted using the LSAT, but 701 students were admitted using the GRE and 23 students were admitted using JD-Next, according to American Bar Association 509 Reports.

Among the schools that admitted students using the GRE, several "T-14" schools appeared at the top of the list, including Yale Law School, which admitted nearly 12% of its 2023-24 class with the exam, followed by Stanford Law School, with nearly 9%; Harvard Law School, with nearly 8%, and Cornell Law School and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, each with 6%. ...

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Jacksonville Seeks To Hire Tenure-Track Or Visiting Tax Prof

Jacksonville University College of Law, Faculty Posting:

Jacksonville University College of Law invites applications for multiple full-time, tenure-track or non-tenure track faculty positions to begin either in Fall or Winter of 2025, or Fall of 2026.

We are also reviewing applications for one- or two-year visitor positions at this time. As a newer law school with a steadily growing student body, we are hiring in all areas of expertise.

Particular needs include legal writing, appellate advocacy, tax, contracts and upper-level business courses, criminal law, evidence, trial advocacy and trial practice, trusts and estates, family law, bar preparation courses, and academic success. Flexibility in teaching across the curriculum, especially the 1L curriculum, and experience with the ABA accreditation process will be highly valued, as will appreciation and enthusiasm for the unique challenges and opportunities of building a new law school. Two to three years of full-time law teaching or the equivalent is preferred. ...

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Zhang: Fiscal Citizenship And Taxpayer Privacy

Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar), Fiscal Citizenship and Taxpayer Privacy, 125 Colum. L. Rev. 235 (2025) (reviewed by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern; Google Scholar) here):

Should individual tax data be public or confidential? Within the United States, secrecy has been the rule since the Tax Reform Act of 1976. But at three critical junctures—the Civil War, the 1920s, and the 1930s—Congress made individual tax records open for public inspection, and newspapers published the incomes of the billionaires of the time. Today, Finland, Norway, and Sweden all mandate significant transparency for individual tax information.

This Essay intervenes in the tax-confidentiality debate by building a new analytical framework of fiscal citizenship. Until now, scholars have focused on compliance—whether disclosure incentivizes honest reporting of income, and if it does, whether compliance gains outweigh the intrusion into a generalized notion of taxpayer privacy. 

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Boycotting Law Clerks To Pressure Schools Might ‘Cross An Important Line,’ 8th Circuit Chief Judge Says
• ABA Journal, Flurry Of Moves Aim To Remedy—And Prevent Future—California Bar Exam Disasters
• ABA Journal, Pontifical Catholic Law School Back In Compliance, ABA Council Finds
• ABA Journal, Recruitment Season Is Moving Up As Firms Search For Summer Talent
• Nick Allard (Dean, Jacksonville), An Important Lesson Learned by Our First Graduates
• Nick Allard (Dean, Jacksonville), JU College of Law Inaugural Graduation: Reflecting Upon the First Three Years
• Nick Allard (Dean, Jacksonville), Make Pro Bono Publico Again
• American Lawyer, Lawyers' AI Missteps Continue, Thanks to Carelessness and Lack of Education

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U.S. Circuit Court Judicial Councils Whiffed In Dismissing Misconduct Complaints Against Federal Judges For Columbia Law Clerk Boycott

Following up on Friday's post, 8th Circuit Joins 5th, 7th, And 11th Circuits In Dismissing Complaint Against Judges For Refusing To Hire Columbia Law Clerks:  Noah Dahl (pseudonym), Judiciary Whiffs Opportunity To Dispel Appearance of Bias:

Last Thursday, the 8th Circuit Judicial Council affirmed the Chief Judge's dismissal of a complaint filed against Judge Daniel Traynor. The order marked the resolution of the last of a flurry of complaints filed in the wake of a letter sent by thirteen federal judges to the president of Columbia University. Fourteen complaints. Five jurisdictions. All dismissed. ...

The New York City Bar Association issued a statement responding: “Whatever the merits of [the judges'] criticisms, it is not the business of federal judges—government actors with particularly stringent duties of impartiality—to police the political views of school administrators and faculty.” Nor to change it, one might add. ...

I[T]he judges demonstrated a lack of both judicial temperament and the discernment needed to adjudicate reasonably and fairly.  Even as he affirmed a right of judges to hire ideologically, Eugene Volokh objected, writing: “we shouldn't threaten innocent neutrals as a means of influencing the culpable.” For a group of judges to engage in just such threats calls their judgment sharply into question. ... [T]he judges’ actions do not meet the standards we should expect of a federal judge.

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Harvard Law Review Retaliates Against Former Editor Working In Trump Administration Who Alleged Pervasive Pattern Of Racial Discrimination

Following up on my previous posts (link below):  Washington Free Beacon (Aaron Sibarium), Harvard Law Review Retaliates Against Alleged Leaker—And Demands He Press Free Beacon To Destroy Documents:

The Harvard Law Review retaliated against a student editor for allegedly leaking documents to the Washington Free Beacon and demanded, as part of the journal’s disciplinary process, that he request their destruction, according to emails obtained by the Free Beacon. The demand came as the law review was under a document retention order stemming from multiple federal probes, raising questions about whether the journal was also trying to interfere with a government investigation.

The Justice Department told Harvard on May 13 that it was investigating reports of racial discrimination at the journal, according to the New York Times. A week later, the law review instructed a student who was cooperating with the government in that investigation, Daniel Wasserman, to round up the documents he’d allegedly shared.

The journal told Wasserman to "[r]equest that any parties with whom you have shared Confidential Materials … delete or return them to The Review." The instruction, conveyed by the law review’s disciplinary committee on May 20, came as the journal was investigating Wasserman for allegedly leaking documents to the Free Beacon, whose report on the law review’s racial preferences had triggered probes by the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services in addition to the Justice Department.

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Request For Nominations: Tax Analysts Award of Distinction (State & Local Tax)

Request for Nominations: 

Tax Analysts Award of Distinction
Tax Analysts is proud to introduce the Awards of Distinction, a new annual recognition program honoring individuals and organizations whose work has transformed the field of taxation. 

Each year, the Awards of Distinction will spotlight innovation, impact, and integrity across three categories: 

• U.S. State and Local Taxation
• U.S. Federal Taxation
• International/Cross-Border Taxation

This year’s inaugural award will focus on State and Local Taxation — celebrating those whose work has shaped policy, improved administration, or advanced public understanding of taxation at the state level. ...

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Call For Papers: 2026 Poverty Law Conference On Scholarship, Pedagogy, And Community In A Time Of Attacks On The Vulnerable
• More California Bar Exam Chaos
• Shaviro: Now Is Now, And Then Is Then—A Memoir

Sunday:

• The Good Samaritan, God, And The Legal Profession
• Renn: The Problem Of Male Friendship
• Pope Leo Drops Papal Supremacy, Urging ‘Full Communion’ With ‘All Christians’
• The Secret To Workplace Happiness: ‘High-Quality Connections’
• Jeopardy! Champion Skips LSAT For Dream Job For Young Men: Stay-At-Home-Son
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

The Good Samaritan, God, And The Legal Profession

Allison McFadden (J.D. 2026, Cornell), Ignoring Drowning Babies (originally published in The Christian Lawyer (Spring 2025)): 

At some point in their first year torts class, law students read the “drowning baby” case: if a bystander walks by a baby drowning in a puddle, he can shield his eyes and walk on by. They learn that at common law, there is no affirmative duty to help someone in need if you did not engender that need. Some students are appalled. Some recount the case over dinner, as entertainment. Most are indifferent.

Besides pointing out that a few states have overridden this default rule by statute, the American legal education is content to stop there. Seldom is it also discussed that the American legal system evolved with a sense of its own limits, that jurists constrained opportunities for liability because they believed that a democratic society required a limited form of government. The point was to make room for the moral will of man and his other associations, like the church.

For Christians who follow the divine law of God, the bar is much higher than what the American legal system requires. In a scenario that parallels the “drowning baby” case, Jesus tells the story of a Samaritan who comes across a Jewish man beaten, robbed, and left lying on the side of the road. The Samaritan does not shield his eyes. He heaps the man onto his donkey, treats his wounds, and pays for his bed in an inn. In God’s Kingdom, Jesus reminds his followers, there is an affirmative duty to help one’s neighbor.

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Renn: The Problem Of Male Friendship

Aaron M. Renn (Author, Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture (2024)), The Problem of Male Friendship:

The lack of male friendships was the subject of a great article in the NYT Magazine [Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?]. The piece, by Sam Graham-Felsen, doesn’t just have great content. It’s also well-written, something that in itself helps explain the enduring dominance of the Times in America.

He explains the problem:

The notion that men in this country suck at friendship is so widespread that it has become a truism, a punchline. “Your dad has no friends,” John Mulaney said during an opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live.” “If you think your dad has friends, you’re wrong. Your mom has friends, and they have husbands. Those are not your dad’s friends.”

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Pope Leo Drops Papal Supremacy, Urging ‘Full Communion’ With ‘All Christians’

Jules Gomes (PhD Biblical Studies, Cambridge), Pope Leo XIV Drops Papal Supremacy, Urging ‘Full Communion’ with ‘All Christians’:

In his trailblazing inaugural sermon, Pope Leo XIV pointed to Christ, rather than Peter, as the foundational “rock” of Christianity, using the term “sister Christian churches” to mark his desire for ecumenical unity.

“Love and unity: these are the two dimensions of the mission entrusted to Peter by Jesus,” he told the 150,000 Catholics, as well as representatives from both Protestant and Orthodox churches, gathered at St. Peter’s Square for his inaugural Mass on Sunday morning.

Leo XIV noted that “the Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone,’” expressly designating Jesus as the founding rock of the Church.

“Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him,” the pontiff emphasized, in a significant departure from conventional Catholic interpretation, which identifies Peter as the “rock” on which Jesus built the Church.

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The Secret To Workplace Happiness: ‘High-Quality Connections’

The Athletic, Joey Votto and Steph Curry Found a Secret to Workplace Happiness. You Can, Too:

As a young first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, Votto showed up to work, kept his head down and locked into his routine, the same drills, the same swings, the same results. ...

The routine turned Votto into one of the best hitters of his era, a multi-time All-Star, an NL MVP, an on-base machine and a potential Hall of Famer. But then one year, he read the seminal book by Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” a self-help tome originally published in 1936.

Votto was struck by a passage about connection. One of the best ways to reach others, Carnegie wrote, was to offer sincere appreciation. It wasn’t enough to show up; you had to be intentional.

In the months and years that followed, Votto began to change. He came out of his shell and found his voice. He counseled younger players, doling out hitting advice and telling jokes, letting teammates into his world, a charming mix of chess, philosophy, science and dry comedy. ...

What Votto had discovered was an idea that Jane Dutton, an organizational psychologist at the University of Michigan, has spent nearly three decades researching.

Her key finding: There is a simple formula for being happier at work. ... [T]here’s [a simple] way to foster happier work places and more cohesiveness among team members. The answer is in what Dutton calls “high-quality connections,” a term she coined to describe the brief, positive interactions between colleagues.

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Jeopardy! Champion Skips LSAT For Dream Job For Young Men: Stay-At-Home-Son

Wall Street Journal, The New Dream Job for Young Men: Stay-at-Home Son:

You’ve mocked them as mooches and mom’s basement dwellers. They prefer the term “stay-at-home sons,” and have a new hero in “Jeopardy” champion Brendan Liaw.

Liaw, 27, has a master’s degree in political science and, judging by his quiz-show performances, an expansive knowledge of everything from the Middle Ages to pop music. He won $59,398 in three contests that aired last week.

He is also unemployed and lives with his parents. At his request, “Jeopardy” host Ken Jennings introduced him at the beginning of each episode as a “recent graduate and stay-at-home son.”

“I figured even if I lost my first game, at least I could make people laugh,” he says. 

It worked. Liaw’s self-deprecating humor made him an overnight legend on social media, where people say he is, like, pretty much living their dream, lol.

The phrase “stay-at-home son” was added to the Urban Dictionary in 2007 as an insult to be hurled at an unmotivated man-child. Lately, though, members of the generation that brought us “quiet quitting” and “lazy-girl jobs” have embraced the label as an ironic badge of honor. ...

I asked Liaw about his career prospects, trivia skills and living arrangement after his run on “Jeopardy.”

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list, with a new #1 paper.

1. [836 Downloads]  Policies to Reduce Federal Budget Deficits by Increasing Economic Growth, by Douglas Elmendorf (Harvard), Glenn Hubbard (Columbia) & Zachary Liscow (Yale)
2. [637 Downloads]  IRS Officials' Stock Holdings and Corporate Tax Outcomes, by Michael Mayberry (Florida; Google Scholar), Eashwar Nagaraj (Florida) & Scott Rane (Florida; Google Scholar)
3. [474 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. [362 Downloads]  Global Tax Decluttering, by Shu-Yi Oei (Duke; Google Scholar) & Diane Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar)
5. [333 Downloads]  Bluff Without Purpose: Rethinking Trump's Tariff Policy and the Misuse of Game Theory, by Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar)

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This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education:

1. Reuters, Trump’s International Student Ban Would Decimate Harvard Law School's 1-Year LL.M. Program ($81,760 Tuition Generates $11 Million/Year)
2. Andrew Blair-Stanek (Maryland), & Donald Gifford (Maryland) et al., AI Gets Its First Law School A+s (And An A In Tax)
3. New York Times, Inside Trump’s Attack On The Harvard Law Review
4. Wall Street Journal, How Cheating Spreads At Law Schools
5. Chronicle of Higher Education, Professors Say They Need A Raise. They Probably Won’t Get One. (But Presidents Will.)
6. Reuters, 8th Circuit Joins 5th, 7th, And 11th Circuits In Dismissing Complaint Against Judges For Refusing To Hire Columbia Law Clerks
7. Jeff Sovern (Maryland), The Impact Of A $150,000 Cap On Government Loans For Law Students
8. Harvard Crimson, Harvard Law Review Forcefully Denies Racial Discrimination Accusations That Sparked Federal Inquiry
9. NALP, BigLaw First Year Associate Salaries Rise To $225,000 In Six Cities
10. LSAC, Reports On The 2024 1L Class
    Daniel Rodriguez (Northwestern), The Trump War On Universities And Law Schools 

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. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: The Key Word In “Net Operating Loss”
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Tax Policy In The Trump Administration
3. Alex Zhang (Emory), The Forgotten Attribution Power
4. Assaf Harpaz (Georgia), Review Of The Global Minimum Tax And Intra Western Tax Competition By Rifat Azam (Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya)
5. Harvey Dale (NYU), Daniel Hemel (NYU) & Jill Manny (NYU), What Are The Real Tax Risks For Harvard?
6. Edward McCaffery (USC), The Property-Tax Bundle Of Rights
7. Lawrence Lokken (Florida), Income Source In A Digital Age
8. Minnesota Law Review, Response Pieces To Bridget Crawford's Taxing Sugar Babies
9. Columbia Tax Policy Conference
1. Day 1
2. Day 2
10. UC Law SF Hosts Tax Conference Today
1. Day 1
2. Day 2

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. Anton Sorkin (Christian Legal Society), Religious Law Schools, Rankings, And Bias
2. The Dispatch (Patrick Brown), Reviews Of Ross Douthat’s Believe: ‘A Mere Christianity For The 21st Century’
3. Washington Post (John Connelly, UC-Berkeley), Pope Leo Teaches A Lesson From Jesus That JD Vance Should Listen To
4. The Free Press (Bill Ackerman), Things Worth Remembering On Memorial Day: ‘Do Not Mourn Me Dead’
5. Christianity Today (Russell Moore), Panic, Pan, And Peter
   New York Times (Ross Douthat), JD Vance On His Faith

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. 

USC Call For Papers: 2026 Poverty Law Conference (Scholarship, Pedagogy, And Community In A Time Of Attacks On The Vulnerable)

Call For Papers: 

This year's conference will take place in Los Angeles on February 20–21, 2026, with a welcome reception on the evening of Thursday, February 19. This national event brings together scholars, educators, and advocates whose work focuses on poverty, inequality, and access to justice. Like previous gatherings, the event will feature paper presentations, roundtable discussions about teaching and advocacy, and opportunities to build community across disciplines and institutions.

We welcome paper abstract and panel submissions in the following areas:

• Critical Issues in Poverty and Inequality: Covering any topic relevant to poverty, including but not limited to housing, healthcare, public benefits, criminal justice, labor and employment, education, fiscal policy, and racial and economic justice.

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More California Bar Exam Chaos

ABA Journal, Flurry of Moves Aim to Remedy—and Prevent Future—California Bar Exam Disasters:

Attempts to resolve myriad issues in the disastrous February administration of California’s bar exam—and to prevent future missteps—spurred a flurry of moves last week from the State Bar of California, the California Supreme Court and law school deans as the state prepares for the return to an in-person administration of the Multistate Bar Examination next month.

State Bar of California, Recitals and Resolutions

The Recorder, California Supreme Court Moves to Strip State Bar Trustees of Exam Authority:

California's Supreme Court on Wednesday proposed shifting oversight of the biannual lawyer licensing exam to the state bar's committee of bar examiners in an apparent rebuke of the board of trustees following the disastrous February test.

Acting on its own motion, the high court released a series of recommended amendments to the Rules of Court, including the swap of exam responsibility. The proposals will now go out for 45 days of public comment before the court ultimately acts.

Bloomberg, California Bar Exam Violated Disability Rights, Applicants Say:

The California Bar systematically failed to provide accommodations on the February Bar exam, violating the rights of test takers with disabilities, a coalition of disabled examinees said in a letter to the Bar.

Reuters, California Bar Exam Lawsuits Against Vendor Consolidated:

A California federal judge on Tuesday consolidated three lawsuits against exam vendor Meazure Learning over California's problem-plagued February bar exam.

Law360, Third Round Of Fixes Sought In Botched Calif. Bar Exam:

The California state bar's committee of bar examiners has approved two additional remedies in an effort to help applicants who failed the troubled February exam.

Reuters, Hundreds of California Bar Exam-Takers Move From Fail to Pass With New Scoring:

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Shaviro: Now Is Now, And Then Is Then—A Memoir

Daniel Shaviro (NYU; Google Scholar), Now Is Now, and Then Is Then: A Memoir: 

“Who am I really? And what should I name my pet iguana?” Few people – and certainly not Daniel Shaviro when he was young - can answer such questions very well. But, as Shaviro shows in this lively, witty, and candid memoir – composed entirely of short vignettes drawn from the first 29 years of his life – he never let any of this stop him from stumbling blindly but high-spiritedly forward.

Biography
Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law, is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. Before entering law teaching, he spent three years each in private practice, and at the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, where he worked on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1987, Shaviro began his teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School, and he moved to NYU Law in 1995.

Shaviro’s scholarly work mainly focuses on tax policy and other fiscal policy, along with inequality and the intersections between law, literature, and social science. His books include Bonfires of the American Dream in American Rhetoric, Literature, and Film (2022), Fixing US International Taxation (2014), Decoding the US Corporate Tax (2009), and Do Deficits Matter? (1997). He has also published a novel, Getting It (2010). In 2023, he received the National Tax Association's Daniel M. Holland Medal, which recognizes lifetime achievement in the study of the theory and practice of public finance.

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Response Pieces To Bridget Crawford's Taxing Sugar Babies

Response Pieces To Taxing Sugar Babies By Bridget J. Crawford, 109 Minn. L. Rev. Headnotes 59-79 (2025):

• 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)
• Victoria J. Haneman (Creighton, moving to Georgia; Google Scholar), The Liminality Of Transactional Relationships, 109 Minn. L. Rev. Headnotes 67 (2025)
• Blaine G. Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Tax Talk and Taxing Sugar Babies, 109 Minn. L. Rev. Headnotes 75 (2025)

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, Recruitment Season Is Moving Up As Firms Search For Summer Talent
• ABA Journal Op-Ed (Ruchie Chadha), What to Know When Hiring the Next Generation of Lawyers
• Andrew Blair-Stanek (Maryland), Donald G. Gifford (Maryland), Mark Graber (Maryland), Guha Krishnamurthi (Maryland), Jeff Sovern (Maryland), Donald B. Tobin (Maryland) & Michael P. Van Alstine (Maryland), AI Gets Its First Law School A+s
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine Caruso Law Celebrates The Class Of 2025
• Chronicle of Higher Education, The Faculty Salary Squeeze: Professors brace for another year of losing ground.
• Harvey P. Dale (NYU), Daniel J. Hemel (NYU) & Jill S. Manny (NYU), What Are the Real Tax Risks for Harvard?
• Law.com, ABA Legal Ed Council Grants Variances To 14 Law Schools To Admit Students Without Taking LSAT/GRE In 2025, Up From 5 Schools In The Past Five Years Combined

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Tax Policy In The Trump Administration

• Americans for Tax Fairness, Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Pushed Billionaires’ Wealth Above $7 Trillion
• Bloomberg, IRS Early Resignation Offer Accepted by Almost 18,000 Employees
• Bloomberg, Justices Back Catholic Groups’ Religious Tax Exemption Claim
• Bloomberg, Trump Bill Unlikely to Repeal Estate Tax, Senate Leader Says
• Bloomberg, Trump Said to Be Open to Lowering SALT Cap in GOP Tax Bill
• Bloomberg, US Demands Global Minimum Tax Concessions in EU Parliament
• Bloomberg, US OECD Funding on Chopping Block in Trump Rescissions Plan
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, House Republican Tax Bill Extends — and Expands — Costly Tax Breaks for the Wealthy

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Tax Prof Alex Zhang Receives Emory Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award For Excellence

Alex Zhang receives Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education from Emory: 

Assistant Professor of Law Alex Zhang was honored with the Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education. Nominations praised Zhang's engaging teaching methods, diverse instructional approaches, and his remarkable ability to demystify complex legal concepts. Students lauded his dedication to understanding their individual goals and providing invaluable academic and career guidance. "Emory is lucky to have him," one nomination stated. ...

Biography
Alex Zhang is a lawyer and scholar of taxation. At Emory, he teaches Federal Income Taxation, Corporate Taxation, Partnership Taxation, and seminars that take historical, comparative, and philosophical approaches to tax policy. His work has appeared in print and as forum essays from Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, NYU Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. It has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court (in Moore v. United States, a key case about the federal taxing power).

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8th Circuit Joins 5th, 7th, And 11th Circuits In Dismissing Complaint Against Judges For Refusing To Hire Columbia Law Clerks

Reuters, US Judge Warns That Law Clerk Hiring Boycotts May Cross Ethical Lines:

Law clerk hiring boycotts, like the type launched by 13 conservative federal judges last year in protest of Columbia University's handling of pro-Palestinian student demonstrations on its campus, may "cross an important line," a top federal appeals court judge concluded.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Colloton reached that conclusion even as he dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint filed with the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Judicial Council against one of those 13 judges, U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor in Bismarck, North Dakota.

In re Complaint of John Doe, JCP No. 08-24-90036 (JUDICIAL COUNCIL OF THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT (Apr. 8, 2025):

This is a judicial complaint against a district judge who has participated in a hiring boycott against graduates of Columbia University in an effort to influence the university’s administration. The subject judge was one of thirteen federal judges who signed a letter in May 2024 to the president of the university.

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Columbia Tax Policy Conference (Day 2)

Columbia hosts day 2 of its tax policy conference today (program): 

David Kamin (NYU), Distribution Reimagined 
Discussant: Natasha Sarin (Yale; Google Scholar)

Policymakers are considering enacting either a new spending program or a tax cut. Who pays for the policy? The answer to that question is central to understanding the consequences. Yet, it is a question which, for the most part, policy analysts and scholars have left under-explored and often answered incorrectly or at least incompletely. Analysts and scholars have approached the issue in a variety of ways including simply believing what policymakers say is the financing in a given piece of legislation or, alternatively, assuming the financing is “distributionally neutral” — offsetting any distributional effects of the benefit given. These approaches are wrong and fail to capture the actual financing. This article suggests an alternative: causal analysis rooted in the political economy of the government. It is distribution reimagined. This article begins to explore what it means to analyze financing as a causal matter. Importantly, there will be no certainty in this endeavor—it is necessarily probabilistic and should take into account the inconsistency of policymakers over time.

The approach can fundamentally change our understanding of the distribution of policy. Policies that seem more progressive may be exactly the opposite. And, it can lead to a re evaluation of the wisdom of policy. Given the political economy of the United States, new benefits could be financed to a significant degree by those with lower incomes, despite what policymakers may say at the time. If policymakers continue to be averse to the types of financing sources that reduce this risk, it suggests greater reason to keep fiscal benefits targeted on those with greater need. In the end, irrespective of one’s policy preferences, this type of causal analysis is critical to understanding the effects and wisdom of fiscal policies.

Adam Kern (San Diego; Google Scholar), A Guide to the Global Minimum Tax
Discussant: Wei Cui (University of British Columbia; Google Scholar) 

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UC Law SF Hosts Tax Conference Today (Day 2)

UC Law SF hosts day 2 of the joint Association of Mid-Career Tax Scholars (AMT) and Experienced in Tax Conference (EITC) today: 

Session 5 (9:15 AM): 

• Philip Hackney (Pittsburgh; Google Scholar), Between Taste and Judgment: (Un)democratic Tax Arts Policy
  • Discussant: Elaine Waterhouse Wilson (West Virginia; Google Scholar) 
• David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia; Google Scholar), The New Tax Shelters
  • Discussant: Diane Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar) 

Session 6 (10:50 AM): 

• Elaine Waterhouse Wilson (West Virginia; Google Scholar), Tax-Exempt Status for Incubators and Accelerators: Pushing the Boundaries of Private Benefit
  • Discussant: Phil Hackney (Pittsburgh; Google Scholar)
• Ben Leff (American; Google Scholar), Shaming, Certification, and Self-Regulation: Closing the Donor-Advised Fund Loophole in the Absence of Governmental Regulation or Enforcement
  • Discussant: Miranda Fleischer (San Diego; 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.

ABA Legal Ed Council Grants Variances To 14 Law Schools To Admit Students Without Taking LSAT/GRE In 2025, Up From 5 Schools In The Past Five Years Combined

Law.com, ABA Sees Surge in Variance Requests to Admit Students Without an Admissions Test:

Since the American Bar Association voted to allow law schools to submit a variance that would allow a school to admit up to 100% of its class without an admissions test late last year, several law schools were quick to take advantage of the option.

The ABA website lists 14 law schools that submitted requests for variances from Standard 503, which governs law school admissions testing requirements, in 2025: 10 were submitted in January and granted in March [Florida State,George Mason, Indiana-Bloomington, McGeorge, Mississippi College, South Dakota, Syracuse, Texas A&M, Utah, and University of Washington], and another four were submitted in April and granted in May [Arizona State, CUNY, Georgia, and Ohio State.

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What Went Wrong In The Apple State Aid Case: Part 1 - The Case

Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar) & Stephen Daly (King's College London; Google Scholar), What Went Wrong in the Apple State Aid Case: Part 1 - The Case , 44 Va. Tax Rev. 351 (2025):

This article—Part 1 in a series of two—offers a detailed and accessible reconstruction of the Apple state aid case, widely regarded as the European Commission’s most high-profile effort to challenge corporate tax avoidance via state aid enforcement. Drawing on primary documents, the authors trace the procedural and legal development of the case—from the Commission’s investigation and final decision to the lower and upper court rulings. The article explains the Commission’s reasoning for finding that Ireland conferred illegal state aid on Apple, including its controversial use of an “allocation-by-exclusion” method and reliance on transfer pricing standards that were not in effect at the time of the contested tax rulings. The case implicated two complex legal domains—state aid and transfer pricing—and turned on whether Ireland’s branch profit allocation method deviated from a valid legal reference base.

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Adler: Is The ABA’s Accreditation Monopoly Coming To An End?

University of Texas Civitas Institute:  Is the ABA’s Accreditation Monopoly Coming to an End?, by Jonathan H. Adler (Case Western; Google Scholar):

As the cost of legal education continues to rise and technological changes threaten to transform the delivery of legal services, the ABA's de facto monopoly on legal accreditation is under siege. Texas and Florida, the states with the third and fourth-most lawyers in the country, are both considering whether to stop requiring bar applicants to have attended an ABA-accredited school. At the same time, the Trump Administration is pushing to expand accreditation options. An April Executive Order directed the Department of Education to step up scrutiny of existing accrediting institutions while simultaneously expediting approval of new accreditors so as "to increase competition and accountability in promoting high-quality, high-value academic programs focused on student outcomes." . . .

In theory, accreditation could serve as a means of consumer protection, helping ensure students do not waste money on fly-by-night operations and graduate capable of passing the bar and serving clients. Yet it is not clear that ABA accreditation has ever actually served that purpose. Just as the medical profession has sought to limit the number of medical school spots to constrain the supply of doctors, the history of legal accreditation suggests that the ABA became involved to advance the financial interests of existing lawyers.

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Sovern: The Impact Of A $150,000 Cap On Government Loans For Law Students

Jeff Sovern (Maryland; Google Scholar), What Effects Might the $150,000 Cap on Government Student Loans For Professional Schools Have?:

The so-called Big Beautiful Bill caps an individual’s aggregate government student loans for professional school education at $150,000. For many people, that wouldn’t be enough to cover the cost of attending, for example, a law or medical school. A 2021 ABA study that surveyed more than 1300 lawyers who had graduated or been licensed in the ten previous years reported that the respondents averaged $108,000 in student loan debt incurred in law school. That average is below the cap, but some respondents reported more than $200,000 in law school debt, well over the cap. And it’s not as if expenses have gone down since then. Medical school, which runs four years, is likely to generate an even higher percentage of students who exceed the cap. ...

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