The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new #1 paper and a new paper debuting on the list at #4.

1. [366 Downloads]  Non-(Fully) Harmonised Excise Taxes and Irrebuttable Presumptions, by Rita de la Feria (Leeds; Google Scholar) 
2. [328 Downloads]  Tax Regulations After Loper Bright, by Andy Grewal (Iowa; Google Scholar)
3. [284 Downloads]  International Tax Scholarship and International Tax Activism, by Wolfgang Schön (Max Planck) (reviewed by Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) here)
4. [269 Downloads]  Reforming the Taxation of Life Insurance, by Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar) & Andrew Granato (Yale; Google Scholar)
5. [262 Downloads]  Flow-Through Entities and the OECD Pillar Two, by Leopoldo Parada (Kings College; Google Scholar)

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This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Jennifer Kindred Mitchell (Baltimore) & Charlie Amiot, Rethinking Legal Education: Demystifying Neurodiversity And Building An Inclusive Future
2. Harvard Gazette, If You Want To Be Dean, You Probably Won’t Be Good At It
3. AccessLex, Predicting Bar Success — The Mediating Effects Of 1L Law School GPA On Undergraduate GPA And LSAT
4. Steven Calabresi (Northwestern), Academic Tuition And Student Loan Relief
5. Sara Berman (USC) & Chance Meyer (New England), Major Reform Of Legal Education With Minor Risk
6. Chronicle of Higher Education, Conservatives Are Rare In Academe. Does It Matter?
7. Diverse: Issues In Higher Education, Compounding Inequities In Law School Are Not Insurmountable
8. Reuters, Minority Enrollment Holds Steady At Top U.S. Law Schools
9. Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman), Should You Have Kids In Law School?
10. ABA Legal Rebels Podcast, Tests Into And Out Of Law Schools

Tax:

1. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Tax Policy In The Biden Administration
3. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Updated 2024 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index All 
4. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Updated 2024 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index Since 2019
5. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Tax Prof Moves, 2023-25
6. Tax Prof Jobs
   • American 
   • Arkansas
   • Boston College
   • Florida
   • Massachusetts
   • Vermont
7. Lily Batchelder (NYU), Ari Glogower (Northwestern), Chye-Ching Huang (NYU), David Kamin (NYU), Rebecca Kysar (Fordham), Kelsey Merrick (NYU), Darien Shanske (UC-Davis) & Thalia Spinrad (NYU), The Moores Lost Their Claim And Moore
8. Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina), Wellness And The Tax Law
9. Rob Natelson (Montana), Direct Taxes And The Founders’ Originalism
10. ABA Tax Section, 24th Annual Law Student Tax Challenge Problem

Faith:

1. New York Times Op-Ed (Matthew Schmitz), Catholic Converts Like JD Vance Are Reshaping Republican Politics
2. Washington Post Op-Ed (Anne Lamott), Living For The Unremarkable Moments
3. Christianity Today Op-Ed (Anna Broadway), It Is Not Best For Man To Eat Alone
4. Michael Reneau (The Dispatch) & Hannah Anderson, The Unbearable Lightness Of Choosing Children
5. Surf Report, Fall 2024 Pepperdine Law & Religion Workshop Series

Why Professors Can’t Teach

Jonathan Zimmerman (Penn), Why Professors Can’t Teach, Washington Monthly, Sept./Oct. 2024: 

In 1949, the graduate dean at the University of Minnesota imagined that he had fallen asleep and woken up in 1984. The first thing he saw was a newspaper. It mentioned none of the “Orwellian horrors” that George Orwell had predicted in his novel. Instead, a banner headline blared “AMERICAN COLLEGE TEACHING REACHES A NEW HIGH,” with all-caps subheads that read “IMPORTANCE OF COLLEGE TEACHING NOW RECOGNIZED BY ALL” and “SKILL OF NEWLY TRAINED COLLEGE TEACHERS IN CLASSROOM AMAZES COMMUNITY.”

These phrases capture the perpetual dream of college-teaching reformers for the past century or more: to make undergraduate instruction into a truly professional enterprise, on par with research. But their reach has always exceeded their grasp. In the 1920s and ’30s, they introduced student evaluations; in the 1950s, seminars and televised lectures; in the 1960s and ’70s, ungraded classes and self-paced modules. Yet teaching remained a lowly endeavor, in status as well as quality: Hired mainly for their publications, many professors were woeful instructors. The problem was already apparent in 1903, when William James—who taught at Harvard for many years, despite never earning a PhD—wrote the most-quoted critique of college teaching: “Will anyone pretend for a moment that a doctor’s degree is a guarantee that its possessor will be a successful teacher?” By mid-century, when the Minnesota dean wrote his missive about 1984, calls to reform undergraduate instruction had already assumed a predictable rhythm. Committees would be formed, statements would be issued, and most professors would continue to teach in the same dull, uninspired manner. In 1957, another university dean wrote that the pattern reminded him of a snow globe he had owned as a child: You shook it up and the flakes scattered, but they soon settled down exactly as before.

So it’s easy to be skeptical about the “Great College Teaching Movement,” the latest effort to improve instruction in higher education. For the past decade, several state university systems have established broad-scale initiatives to recognize—and upgrade—teaching. The leading force in this campaign is the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE), cofounded by a former New York City educational official, Jonathan Gyurko, in 2014. Gyurko holds a PhD—from Columbia University Teachers College—but he’s not a standard-issue academic; instead, he is trying to alter the standards that academics use to judge each other.

Prior efforts to reform college teaching relied almost entirely on moral suasion: If you prick people’s conscience, the theory went, they will change. But nothing will really change, Gyurko says, until faculty have a clear incentive to get better. So ACUE has designed an online training course, which has been completed by 26,000 professors on 450 campuses. Some of them have received stipends; others are awarded new titles, like “distinguished teaching scholar.” Most importantly, perhaps, research has already demonstrated that students who take courses from an ACUE-accredited professor are more likely to complete them. So universities also have a clear financial reason to invest in teaching, which wasn’t as apparent in prior eras. Gyurko acknowledges the long history of failed reforms in this realm, of course. But “this time,” he insists, “it’s different.”

I hope he’s right. Yet it’s hard to imagine a real revolution in college teaching unless the big players get behind it, from the outlets that rank colleges to the governments that fund them. ... [T]he college classroom remains a black box, which almost nobody in power wants to open. Maybe they’re afraid of what they might find inside. ...

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The Biden Administration’s Unconstitutional Student Loan Cancellation Plans & Congress’s Responsibility To Address The Root Cause Of The Student Loan Crisis

James M. Truett (J.D. 2024, Louisiana State), Comment, Congress, Tear Down This Educational Wall: The Biden Administration's Unconstitutional Student Loan Cancellation Plans & Congress's Responsibility to Address the Root Cause of the Student Loan Crisis, 84 La. L. Rev. 625 (2024): 

The goal of student loan programs is to offer students financial assistance and to give the students an opportunity to receive an education. However, as an entire country, the United States has lost sight of this once revolutionary and effective goal. Student loans cause more harm than benefit by imposing enormous amounts of debts on to teenagers who just want a chance to receive an education. The harms certainly outweigh the benefits for recent graduates who will not take their dream job because it will not pay enough to finance their student loan repayments. While the burden of repaying student loans should remain with the students, universities must be held accountable for their predatory financial practices.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Kern Reviews Deferring Income With Tiered And Circular Partnerships By Sanchirico & Shuldiner

This week, Adam Kern (San Diego; Google Scholar) reviews an article by Chris William Sanchirico (Penn; Google Scholar) and Reed Shuldiner (Penn), Deferring Income with Tiered and Circular Partnerships.

Taxes can be deferred when partnerships have different taxable years from their partners. A partnership might take account of its income in, say, January, while a partner might only take account of its income in December. In that case, the partner would defer taxes on its distributive share of partnership income for 11 months.

The academic literature has assumed that this opportunity for deferral is limited. In “Deferring Income with Tiered and Circular Partnerships,” Chris Sanchirico and Reed Shuldiner show that it is not. Taxpayers can achieve a large—indeed, unbounded—extent of deferral with tiered and circular partnerships. Moreover, while the partnership structures described by Sanchirico & Shuldiner are ingenious, they are not so large or complex as to be obviously infeasible. This is a genuine opportunity that taxpayers might well seize.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA & AccessLex, Student Debt Impacts Well-Being And Life Decisions Of Young Lawyers
• AccessLex, Predicting Bar Success: The Mediating Effects of Law School GPA
• Steven Calabresi (Northwestern), Academic Tuition and Student Loan Relief
• Chronicle of Higher Education, The Professoriate's Political Problem
• Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman), Should You Have Kids In Law School?
• Fordham Conference, Forming Lawyer-Stewards: The Special Role Of Religious Law Schools
• Harvard Gazette, You Want to be Boss. You Probably Won’t Be Good At It
• Jennifer Kindred Mitchell (Baltimore) & Charlie Amiot, Rethinking Legal Education: Demystifying Neurodiversity and Building an Inclusive Future

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• The American Prospect, Kamala’s Capital Capitulation
• Americans for Tax Fairness & Color of Change, How Tax Fairness Can Promote Racial Equity
• Bloomberg, Trump Pledges No Taxes on Overtime in Pitch to Blue-Collar Vote
• Tyler Cohen (George Mason), If Harris Taxes Americans’ Wealth, Foreigners Will Benefit
• Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, The Kamala Harris Plan for Taxing Capital Income

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, September 16: Luís C. Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) will present Taxation’s Limits, 119 Nw. U. L. Rev. __ (2024), as part of the Boston College Tax Policy Collaborative. If you would like to attend, please contact Diane Ring. 

Tuesday, September 17: Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) will present A New View of Formal Equality as part of the Columbia Faculty Workshop Series. 

Friday, September 20: Ron Harris (Tel Aviv; Google Scholar) will present a chapter from Empire Ltd.: Law and the Rise of Multinational Companies in the First Era of Globalization (1844-1914) as part of the Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs. If you would like to attend, please register here. 

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Student Debt Impacts Well-Being And Life Decisions Of Young Lawyers

ABA & AccessLex, Student Debt, COVID-19 Relief, and Loan Forgiveness: Perspectives from Today’s Young Lawyers — Selected Findings from the 2024 American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division Student Loan Survey:

Executive Summary
Over the last few years, the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division (ABA YLD) has used data from its members to sound the alarm on student loan debt trends and the impact of student loan debt on early career attorneys who are under the age of 36 or were first admitted to practice within the last 10 years. The 2020 and 2021 Student Debt Surveys elucidated the ways in which education debt tangibly burdens relatively new J.D. recipients —most of whom are in the process of building their careers and lives. Both surveys’ results indicated that those with the highest debt balances are more often to report delaying or forgoing significant life events (e.g., marriage, homebuying, and having children). Further, the 2021 Report demonstrated that the impacts of debt are not felt equally among all young lawyers; lawyers of color are disproportionately likely to have borrowed for their education, carry high debt balances, and see their debt balances grow after graduation.

The 2024 survey results reaffirm the above findings while offering new insights regarding young lawyers’ experiences with the COVID-19 student loan repayment pause, their plans in the event of loan forgiveness, their satisfaction with loan servicers, and their mindsets regarding work-life balance. The survey results also illustrate notable differences in borrowing and debt effects by respondent characteristics, including first-generation college status. In summary, the findings indicate:

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California Bar Wants To Offer Exam Score Boosts, Payments To Sample Test Guinea Pigs

The Recorder, California Bar Wants to Offer Exam Score Boosts, Payments to Sample Test Guinea Pigs:

Select California bar exam applicants who complete a sample test written by Kaplan could receive financial incentives and see their actual 2025 exam scores boosted under a plan the state bar submitted to the California Supreme Court this week.

In two filings with the high court on Monday, state bar leaders said they need to test drive sample multiple-choice questions drafted by testing giant Kaplan, which the bar recently retained to provide a 200-question exam starting with the February 2025 sitting. The bar’s testing expert would evaluate the exam and results for the bar.

As an incentive for field testing 49 sample multiple-choice questions in November, up to 4,300 participants could receive an as-yet-undetermined payment if the state bar secures grant funding, the bar’s filing with the court stated. The bar would also offer to raise the scores of certain sample-test participants who then take the actual multiple-choice exam in February or July 2025. ...

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Osofsky: Wellness And The Tax Law

Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Wellness and The Tax Law, 59 Ga. L. Rev. __ (2025):

The tax law has long provided extensive subsidies for "medical care." These subsidies cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The definition of medical care, which is at the heart of these subsidies, originated many decades ago, at a time when there was little to no conception of wellness. 

Times have changed in the medical world. Medical science now emphasizes that wellness practices, like exercise, meditation, and social connection, have an important impact on physical as well as mental health, including by playing a significant role in preventing and treating disease. Under the tax statute, medical care includes "treatment. .. or prevention of disease." The tax law nonetheless disallows subsidies for wellness expenditures under the theory that they are "merely beneficial to general health." This tension between medical science and tax law demands that we reappraise tax law's medical care subsidy. 

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AccessLex: Predicting Bar Success — The Mediating Effects Of 1L Law School GPA On Undergraduate GPA And LSAT

AccessLex, Predicting Bar Success: The Mediating Effects of Law School GPA:

Most American law schools evaluate candidates for admission based on final undergraduate GPA (UGPA) and Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores, due in part to accreditation requirements and institutional bar passage goals. However, several studies have demonstrated racial and ethnic score disparities associated with the LSAT, and prior literature suggests that admissions metrics have limited utility for predicting bar passage — especially when accounting for academic performance in law school.

This study uses data from nearly 20,000 lawyers who graduated from 39 law schools to build on previous literature. We propose statistical mediation to achieve a more accurate understanding of the relationship between, and predictive value of, law school admission factors, first-year law school GPA (1L LGPA), and first-time bar passage.

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The Impact Of Jarkesy On Civil Tax Fraud Penalties

Bryan Camp (Texas Tech; Google Scholar), The Impact of Jarkesy on Civil Tax Fraud Penalties, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. __ (2024):

On June 27, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy. It held that when the SEC sought a $300,000 civil penalty against Mr. Jarkesy for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitled him to a jury trial in an Article III court.  The week before, the Tax Court, an Article I court, issued a decision upholding the IRS’s imposition of a $6.3 million civil penalty against a taxpayer for tax fraud.  No jury was available. 

This article considers whether Jarkesy now requires adjudication of civil tax fraud penalties in an Article III court with access to a jury. That question is more nuanced than it might first appear. The answer depends on how one balances government administrative needs against individual liberty interests. Jarkesy inverts prior teachings on how courts should perform that balance. 

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Tax Prof Moves, 2023-25

Here is a list of (1) visiting assistant professor hires; (2) entry-level hires; (3) lateral moves; (4) promotions, tenures, chairs, and professorships; (5) administrative appointments: (6) visits; and (7) retirements involving tax professors in 2023-25. (Email me any omissions.) 

VAP Hires

• Fernando Loayza Jordán (JSD 2025, Yale) to Drexel (2025)
• Erika Isabella Scuderi (Space Policy Institute) to Florida (2024)
• Alex Ferrara Walker (Wachtell) to NYU (2024)

Entry Level Hires

• Conor Clarke (Department of Justice) to Washington University (2023)
• Jon Endean (VAP, NYU) to Brooklyn (2024)
• Assaf Harpaz (VAP, Drexel) to Georgia (2024)
• Adam Kern (Furman Fellow, NYU) to San Diego (2024)
• Luke Maher (Skadden) to Seattle (2023)
• Deanna Newton (Caruso Family Fellow, Pepperdine) to Pepperdine (2024) 
• Alex Zhang (Law Clerk, Hon. Guido Calabresi, 2nd Circuit) to Emory (2023) 

Lateral Moves

• Jonathan Choi (Minnesota) to USC (2023)
• Steven Dean (Brooklyn) to Boston University (2023)
• Dhammika Dharmapala (Chicago) to UC-Berkeley (2023)
• David Gamage (Indiana-Maurer) to Missouri-Columbia (2024)
• Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.) to USC (2024)
• Orli Oren-Kolbinger (Sapir Academic College) to Oregon (2024)
• Victoria Perry (IMF) to Georgetown Graduate Tax Program (2023)
• Gregg Polsky (Georgia) to NYU (2024)
• Kyle Rozema (Washington University) to Northwestern (2023)
• Blaine Saito (Northeastern) to Ohio State (2023)
• Phyllis Taite (Oklahoma City) to Oklahoma (2023)
• Del Wright (UMKC) to Louisiana State (2024)
• Richard Winchester (Seton Hall) to Brooklyn (2024)
• Patrice Wylly (Jane Street Group) to Georgetown Graduate Tax Program (2023)

Promotions, Tenures, Chairs, and Professorships

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UC-San Francisco Hosts Conference On U.S. International Tax Rules: Options For Change

UC-San Francisco hosts a conference on Complexities, Discontinuities, and Unintended Consequences of U.S. International Tax Rules: Options for Change today (registration): 

An east coast version of this conference was organized by the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Florida and was held in June 17-18, 2024 in Washington, D.C. More information about that conference can be found here. This west coast version of the conference will focus on the international tax provisions most relevant to technology- and intangibles-based enterprises.

Welcome 

• Mindy Herzfeld (Florida) 
• Heather Field (UC-San Francisco; Google Scholar) 

Session #1: Taxing of CFC Earnings – GILTI and Subpart F

The panelists will explore design issues of Subpart F income and GILTI, their differences, and opportunities for harmonization post TCJA.

• Kara Mungovan (Davis Polk), Subpart F and GILTI Recommendations, 115 Tax Notes Int'l 729 (July 29, 2024) 
• Gretchen Sierra (Deloitte) (commentator)
• Brian Jenn (McDermott) (commentator) 

Session #2: Foreign Tax Credit

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Fordham Conference: Forming Lawyer-Stewards — The Special Role Of Religious Law Schools

Fordham hosts a conference on Forming Lawyer-Stewards: The Special Role of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools today and tomorrow (registration): 

Join us at the 2024 Religiously Affiliated Law School (RALS) biennial Conference, delving into the vital concept of stewardship — a principle deeply rooted in many of the world’s major religions. Our aim is to explore the critical role of lawyers as stewards of both our communities and the world. Employing a dialogue-based approach, the conference shall bring attendees together in small but diverse working groups where they will discuss how stewardship intersects with key areas such as the environment, criminal justice, and immigration. We look forward to welcoming students, legal scholars, law school administrators, and legal practitioners' voices as we explore the concept of lawyer-stewards.

September 12

Welcome Remarks 

• Joseph Landau (Dean, Fordham; Google Scholar) 

Keynote Address 

• Tania Tetlow (President, Fordham) 

Opening Panel: Religious Perspectives on Stewardship 

• Russell Pearce (Fordham) (moderator)
• Robert Cochran (Pepperdine; Google Scholar) 
• Mohammad Fadel (Toronto; Google Scholar) 
• Diane Kemker (Pepperdine/Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar)
• Samuel Levine (Touro)
• Amy Uelmen (Georgetown) 

Workshop #1: Stewardship and Welcoming the Stranger

• Gemma Solimene (Fordham) (moderator)
• Nermeen Arastu (CUNY)
• Saul Berman (Columbia) 
• Carolina Nuñez (BYU) 

Workshop #2: Stewardship and Loving Your Neighbor

• Jeffrey Brauch (Regent; Google Scholar) (moderator)
• Allison Carpenter (Catholic)
• Thomas More Donnelly (Loyola-Chicago)
• Cecelia Klingele (Wisconsin; Google Scholar) 
• Shlomo Pill (Texas Southern; Google Scholar)

September 13

Workshop #3: Stewardship and Caring for the Environment

• Nadia Ahmad (Barry; Google Scholar) 
• Saul Berman (Columbia) 
• Lucia Ann Silecchia (Catholic University) 

Concluding Panel 

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

Natelson: Direct Taxes And The Founders’ Originalism

Rob Natelson (Montana), Direct Taxes and the Founders’ Originalism:

Professor Donald Drakeman’s response to my essay on direct and indirect taxes presents an opportunity to offer some background on constitutional originalism.

My thesis was that the longstanding uncertainty over the Constitution’s distinction between direct and indirect taxes persists because probative Founding-era evidence continues to be overlooked. In addition to references in eighteenth-century literature, that evidence consists of (1) uncontradicted comments by participants in the ratification debates which mesh well with (2) a plethora of eighteenth-century British and American direct tax statutes. (Detailed citations can be found here and here.)

These sources tell us that direct taxes include capitations and levies on real and personal property (i.e., wealth), income, and occupations. Indirect taxes (duties) include levies on consumption of domestically-sold goods (excises), customs (exactions on imports and exports), and levies on certain other transactions and events.

Professor Drakeman’s response cited his 2013 co-authored article on the 1796 Supreme Court case of Hylton v. United States.

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Boston College Seeks To Hire An Estate Planning Fellow

Boston College, Estate Planning Fellow:  

The Estate Planning Fellow for the Initiative will report to Professor Thomas W. Mitchell, who serves as the Director of the Initiative as well as to the Senior Associate Director of Operations once that staff person is hired and comes onboard. The Fellow also will work quite closely and in a collaborative way with the Special Projects Manager, David Price, the Initiative’s point person for the Harvard University-funded project described below.

The Estate Planning Fellow will play a leading role in the Initiative’s work under the Homeownership Estate Planning Project (the Project) funded by the Reparative Partnership Grant Program of the Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Initiative. The Project will provide disadvantaged homeowners and homebuyers in Boston and Cambridge, and elsewhere in Massachusetts over time, with estate planning classes combined with legal assistance to create estate plans.

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American And Arkansas Seek To Hire A Clinical Tax Prof

American, Faculty Posting: 

American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) seeks applications for the 2025-2026 academic year for six entry-level or lateral tenure-line positions, with interest in torts, environmental law, criminal law, criminal justice clinic, data privacy, law and government, international law, and tax law. We have particular interest in entry-level or lateral candidates who would teach in and administer the Janet R. Spragens Federal Tax Clinic. We are especially interested in candidates who will contribute to our vibrant and diverse community. ... 

If you have general questions regarding the application process, please contact Erica Devine, Faculty Affairs Manager. Please contact Andrew Ferguson, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee with any other questions. Although there is no formal deadline, we will begin interviewing candidates as early as August 2024, so interested candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.

Arkansas (Little Rock), Assistant Professor of Clinical Education: 

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Updated 2024 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index Since 2019

Yesterday, I posted Google Scholar H-Index All rankings of the Top 129 tax professors with Google Scholar pages (data collected on September 3). The Google Scholar H-Index Since 2019 rankings are below. If you are a full-time law school tax professor with a Google Scholar page and we missed including you, please contact me.

Rank	Name	School	Google Scholar H-Index (Since 2019)
1	Joel Slemrod	Michigan	56
2	Alan Auerbach	UC-Berkeley	43
3	James Hines	Michigan	33
4	Reuven Avi-Yonah	Michigan	29
5	Kimberly Clausing	UCLA	25
5	Dhammika Dharmapala	UC-Berkeley	25
7	Jacob Goldin	Chicago	23
8	David Weisbach	Chicago	22
9	Daniel Hemel	NYU	21
10	Kristin Hickman	Minnesota	20
11	Edward McCaffery	USC	18
11	Dan Shaviro	NYU	18
11	Robert Sitkoff	Harvard	18
14	Brian Galle	Georgetown	17
14	Leandra Lederman	Indiana (Maurer)	17
14	Eric Zolt	UCLA	17
17	Kyle Logue	Michigan	16
18	Yariv Brauner	Florida	15
18	Zachary Liscow	Yale	15
18	Kyle Rozema	Northwestern	15
21	Bridget Crawford	Pace	14
21	Nancy Knauer	Temple	14
21	Diane Ring	Boston College	14
24	David Gamage	Missouri (Columbia)	13
24	Andrew Hayashi	Virginia	13
24	Ruth Mason	Virginia	13
24	Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer	Notre Dame	13
24	Lawrence Zelenak	Duke	13
29	Hugh Ault	Boston College	12
29	Dorothy Brown	Georgetown	12
29	Jonathan Choi	USC	12
29	Rebecca Kysar	Fordham	12
29	Sarah Lawsky	Northwestern	12
29	Omri Marian	UC-Irvine	12
29	Shu-Yi Oei	Duke	12
29	Chris Sanchirico	Penn	12
29	Darien Shanske	UC-Davis	12
29	Michael Simkovic	USC	12
29	David Walker	Boston Univ.	12
40	Steven Bank	UCLA	11
40	Joshua Blank	UC-Irvine	11
40	Clifton Fleming	BYU	11
40	Ajay Mehrotra	Northwestern	11
40	Susan Morse	Texas	11
40	Stephen Shay	Boston College	11
46	John Brooks	Fordham	10
46	Samuel Brunson	Loyola-Chicago	10
46	Kathleen Delaney Thomas	North Carolina	10
46	Victor Fleischer	UC-Irvine	10
46	Nancy McLaughlin	Utah	10
46	Leigh Osofsky	North Carolina	10
46	James Repetti	Boston College	10
46	Linda Sugin	Fordham	10
54	Ellen Aprill	Loyola-L.A.	9
54	Jordan Barry	USC	9
54	Leslie Book	Villanova	9
54	Miranda Perry Fleischer	San Diego	9
54	Ari Glogower	Northwestern	9
54	Christine Hurt	SMU	9
54	Jay Soled	Rutgers	9

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Fellowship Opportunities For The 117th National Tax Association Conference

The National Tax Association offers three fellowship opportunities for the 117th Annual Conference:

The NTA is pleased to offer three fellowship/funding opportunities for the 117th Annual Conference, the NTA Equity and Inclusion Travel Fellowship, the NTA Pre-Conference Mentoring Dinner for Women/Non-Binary Persons, and the NTA Climate Tax Fellowship. See below for the specifics for each fellowship.

NTA Equity and Inclusion Travel Fellowship

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Sunstein: Free Speech And The Educational Mission

Cass Sunstein (Harvard; Google Scholar), Free Speech and the Educational Mission (excerpted from Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide (Harvard University Press Sept. 3, 2024)):

Public colleges and universities are bound by the First Amendment. Their private counterparts are not (though a state might choose to apply the requirements of the First Amendment to them, as California has largely done). But if private universities choose to follow the First Amendment, they will make life a lot easier, and also a lot better, for faculty, administrators, and students alike.

One reason is that First Amendment principles make most cases easy.

The First Amendment does not protect plagiarism, sexual harassment, or true threats ("I will hurt you if I see you in the dining room again"). At the same time, the First Amendment protects a wide range of viewpoints, including those that many consider, or that just are, offensive,  hurtful, insulting, or humiliating.

If someone on campus says, "Capitalism is racism," or "Israel should never have been created," or "Democrats are communists," or "January 6, 2021 should be a national holiday," or "Russia all the way," or "Affirmative action is the worst form of race discrimination," the First Amendment doesn't allow regulation.

Still, there are plenty of hard cases. Many of the hardest arise when a college or university claims that restrictions are justified by its educational mission. ...

A university can deny tenure to a law professor whose published work consists entirely of science fiction. That's also a form of content discrimination, and it's also okay. ...

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Derenoncourt Presents Wealth Of Two Nations: The US Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020 Today At NYU

Ellora Derenoncourt (Princeton; Google Scholar) presents Wealth of Two Nations: The US Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020 (online appendix) (with Chi Hyun Kim (University of Bonn), Moritz Kuhn (University of Mannheim; Google Scholar) & Moritz Schularick (Kiel Institute, Sciences Po Paris; Google Scholar)) at NYU today as part of its Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium hosted by Daniel Shaviro:

The racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. It is also among the most persistent. In this article, we construct the first continuous series on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios from 1860 to 2020, drawing on historical census data, early state tax records, and historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, among other sources. Incorporating these data into a parsimonious model of wealth accumulation for each racial group, we document the role played by initial conditions, income growth, savings behavior, and capital returns in the evolution of the gap. Given vastly different starting conditions under slavery, racial wealth convergence would remain a distant scenario, even if wealth-accumulating conditions had been equal across the two groups since Emancipation. Relative to this equal-conditions benchmark, we find that observed convergence has followed an even slower path over the past 150 years, with convergence stalling after 1950. 

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Calabresi: Academic Tuition And Student Loan Relief

Steven Calabresi (Northwestern), Academic Tuition and Student Loan Relief:

As a law professor for the last 34 years, I have a special window into understanding the forces that are driving historically unprecedented tuition increases in academia. I believe that one of the main drivers of tuition increases is not faculty salaries, which have been stagnant, but instead increases in the size of university bureaucracies. These increases in my view are often harmful to the academic mission. They also impose an insurmountable burden on the American people.

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Vermont Seeks To Hire A Lateral Tax Prof

Vermont Law, Tenure-Track Faculty: 

Vermont Law and Graduate School (VLGS), a national leader in environmental law and restorative justice, invites applications for multiple tenure-track faculty positions for required JD and upper-level JD courses including Income Tax, Estates, and Environmental Law, broadly defined. Candidates with expertise in water law, land use, sustainability, private governance, and environmental justice are strongly encouraged to apply. Appointments are for July 2025; precise start dates are flexible. This search is part of a multi-year strategic hiring plan, and entry-level, junior, and senior lateral candidates will be considered. The school’s curricular needs include both residential and online courses.  Candidates should demonstrate evidence of, or potential for, outstanding scholarly achievement and strong, innovative, and engaged residential and/or online teaching. ... 

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Updated 2024 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index All

Below are the updated Google Scholar H-Index All rankings of the Top 114 U.S. tax professors with Google Scholar pages (data collected on September 3). If you are a full-time law school tax professor with a Google Scholar page and we missed including you, please contact me.

Rank	Name	School	Google Scholar H-Index (All)
1	Joel Slemrod	Michigan	99
2	Alan Auerbach	UC-Berkeley	96
3	James Hines	Michigan	66
4	Reuven Avi-Yonah	Michigan	39
5	David Weisbach	Chicago	38
6	Dan Shaviro	NYU	35
7	Dhammika Dharmapala	UC-Berkeley	33
8	Edward McCaffery	USC	31
9	Kimberly Clausing	UCLA	30
10	Brian Galle	Georgetown	28
10	Eric Zolt	UCLA	28
12	Kristin Hickman	Minnesota	27
12	Kyle Logue	Michigan	27
12	Lawrence Zelenak	Duke	27
15	Jacob Goldin	Chicago	26
15	Chris Sanchirico	Penn	26
15	Robert Sitkoff	Harvard	26
18	Daniel Hemel	NYU	25
18	Nancy Knauer	Temple	25
20	Steven Bank	UCLA	23
20	Leandra Lederman	Indiana (Maurer)	23
22	Dorothy Brown	Georgetown	21
22	Diane Ring	Boston College	21
24	Richard Kaplan	Illinois	20
24	Nancy McLaughlin	Utah	20
24	David Walker	Boston Univ.	20
27	Yariv Brauner	Florida	19
28	Ellen Aprill	Loyola-L.A.	18
28	Bridget Crawford	Pace	18
28	Clifton Fleming	BYU	18
28	David Gamage	Missouri (Columbia)	18
28	Ruth Mason	Virginia	18
33	Paul Caron	Pepperdine	17
33	Anthony Infanti	Pittsburgh	17
33	Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer	Notre Dame	17
33	Richard Pomp	Connecticut	17
33	Darien Shanske	UC-Davis	17
33	Jay Soled	Rutgers	17
39	Hugh Ault	Boston College	16
39	John Coverdale	Seton Hall	16
39	Victor Fleischer	UC-Irvine	16
39	Ajay Mehrotra	Northwestern	16
39	Shu-Yi Oei	Duke	16
39	Gregg Polsky	Georgia	16
39	James Repetti	Boston College	16
46	Sarah Lawsky	Northwestern	15
46	Zachary Liscow	Yale	15
46	Omri Marian	UC-Irvine	15
46	Kyle Rozema	Northwestern	15
46	Stephen Shay	Boston College	15
46	Linda Sugin	Fordham	15
52	Joshua Blank	UC-Irvine	14
52	Bradley Borden	Brooklyn	14
52	Andrew Hayashi	Virginia	14
52	Christine Hurt	SMU	14
52	Linda Jellum	Idaho	14
52	Henry Ordower	St. Louis	14
52	Michael Simkovic	USC	14

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ABA Tax Section Releases 24th Annual Law Student Tax Challenge Problem

The ABA Tax Section has released the J.D. Problem (rules) and LL.M. Problem (rules) for the 24th Annual Law Student Tax Challenge:

An alternative to traditional moot court competitions, the Law Student Tax Challenge (LSTC) is organized by the Section’s Young Lawyers Forum. The LSTC asks two-person teams of students to solve a complex business problem that might arise in everyday tax practice. Teams are initially evaluated on two criteria: a memorandum to a senior partner and a letter to a client explaining the result. Based on the written work product, six teams from the J.D. Division and four teams from the LL.M. Division receive a free trip to the Tax Section’s Midyear Meeting, where each team presents its submission before a panel of judges consisting of the country’s top tax practitioners and government officials, including tax court judges. The competition is a great way for law students to showcase their knowledge in a real-world setting and gain valuable exposure to the tax law community. 

2024-2025 Law Student Tax Challenge: Important Dates

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Minority Enrollment Holds Steady At Top U.S. Law Schools

Reuters, Minority Enrollment Holds Steady at Top U.S. Law Schools, Early Data Indicates:

Early data from a handful of top U.S. law schools shows the percentage of nonwhite students enrolling this year has remained mostly unchanged following the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring colleges and universities from considering race in admissions.

Six of the top 20 U.S. law schools—as ranked by U.S. News & World Report—have disclosed some racial diversity data on their websites or provided it directly to Reuters as of Sept. 5. Of those, five reported that the percentage of first-year students of color this fall increased or remained steady this year. One said that figure declined.

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The Moores Lost Their Claim And Moore

Lily Batchelder (NYU), Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar), Chye-Ching Huang (NYU), David Kamin (NYU), Rebecca Kysar (Fordham; Google Scholar), Kelsey Merrick (NYU), Darien Shanske (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) & Thalia Spinrad (NYU), The Moores Lost Their Claim and Moore, 184 Tax Notes Fed. 1509 (Aug. 19, 2024): 

In this article, the authors analyze the logic of Moore and argue that in many important ways, the decision undercuts attempts to sharply limit Congress’s taxing power.

Conclusion
The Moores’ counsel and some of their amici are urging that the opinion be read to tacitly rule out wealth taxes, mark-to-market taxes, and perhaps even impose a constitutional realization requirement, despite the fact the opinion explicitly disclaims doing any of those things. After all, that would turn their loss into a win. But the Court expressly declined to decide these questions.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• Remembering Frederick Schauer (Virginia) (1946-2024)
• William Baude (Chicago)
• Michael Dorf (Cornell)
• Brian Leiter (Chicago)
• Richard Re (Virginia)
• Larry Solum (Virginia)
• University of Virginia
• ABA Journal, 5th Circuit Becomes ‘Proving Ground’ For Aggressive Arguments By Conservatives
• ABA Journal, Did You Read The Small Print? ‘Infinite’ Arbitration Clauses Are On The Rise
• ABA Journal, White Male Law Student Settles Suit Against Chicago Bears Over ‘Legal Diversity Fellow’ Position
• Above the Law, Law School Offers Class On Trump & The Constitution, Gets Attacked With Scare Quotes

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Florida And Massachusetts Seek To Hire Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Profs

University of Florida Law, Faculty Posting

University of Florida Levin College of Law seeks to hire several professors, across a variety of fields, as part of the College’s pursuit of excellence in legal education and scholarship. The University of Florida, located in Gainesville, FL, is among the nation’s leading public research institutions and the flagship university of the third largest state. The Levin College of Law seeks highly qualified candidates for tenure-track positions.

The Appointments Committee welcomes applications from entry-level and pre-tenure lateral candidates writing in all areas of law. Successful candidates will have publication records, strong scholarly potential, commitment to excellence in teaching, and enthusiasm for creating a welcoming environment for all students. Candidates must also have a JD or equivalent academic degree. In reviewing applications, the Appointments Committee will consider long-term teaching needs in required and large enrollment classes, including but not limited to antitrust law, civil procedure, environmental law, health law, taxation (corporate, partnership, and/or international), torts, and voting rights.

To apply for a position or to request further information, applicants should contact the Appointments Committee’s co-chairs Jane Bambauer or Yariv Brauner.

University of Massachusetts Law, Assistant/Associate Professor of Law: 

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Chronicle: Conservatives Are Rare In Academe. Does It Matter?

Chronicle of Higher Education, The Professoriate's Political Problem:

Conservatives Are Rare in Academe. Does It Matter?

In a recent essay in The Chronicle [Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?], the Johns Hopkins political scientist Steven Teles asserted that “the public’s impression that American higher education has grown increasingly closed-minded is undeniably correct.” He pointed to the declining presence of conservatives on academic faculties and in graduate cohorts, arguing that it poses an acute problem for how academe functions and is a serious drag on how higher education is perceived.

Teles’s essay tapped into a long-brewing debate about political diversity and the professoriate. It also elicited a large and varied response from readers. To continue this complicated and contentious discussion, we asked a group of academics to weigh in. Among the questions we posed:

• What has led to the underrepresentation of conservatives in academe?
• What, if any, concrete steps ought to be taken by colleges to redress the imbalance of political representation?
• What role, if any, should non-conservatives play in the defense and preservation of conservative viewpoints in academe?

Here’s what they told us. ...

Brian Leiter (Chicago), Scholarship, Not Partisanship:

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Morriss: The Impact Of International Financial Centers

Andrew P. Morriss (Texas A&M; Google Scholar), The Impact of International Financial Centers (Aug. 27, 2024), in Defending Globalization: Economics (Cato Institute):

Just as there is a global market for cell phones and wheat, there is also a global market for law. That may seem strange to many people, since they don’t think about buying law the same way they think about buying goods and other types of services, but law is as much the subject of a global market as those are. Indeed, many things we do in day-to-day life include laws from outside the communities where we live and work. If you have a credit card, you’ve likely agreed that the law of a state other than the one you live in governs any disputes that you have with the bank that issued it (often South Dakota). If you own stock in a Fortune 500 company, your rights as a shareholder are likely governed by Delaware law, where most large US public companies are incorporated. If your 401(k) plan includes a fund that invests in corporate bonds, the fund’s rights (and so yours) are likely governed by New York law.

Foreign legal systems probably affect your life as well. Many hospitals in the United States are insured through insurance companies incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean that is better known to most people for its beaches and scuba diving than for providing insurance to health care providers. The extended warranty you bought on an appliance could be funded through a Turks & Caicos Islands company, another British Overseas Territory. And any insurance policy you buy from a US insurer is likely reinsured through a Bermuda-based (yet another British Overseas Territory!) reinsurer.

All of these are examples of the results of jurisdictional competition, which is the competition among jurisdictions to persuade people to bring legal business to them. The international version of this competition is little different from the domestic American version. In our federal system, states compete for economic activities by offering legal and business environments to attract entrepreneurs. Attractions include business courts (to speed resolution of disputes), business entities laws that cut the transaction costs of creating new businesses, low taxes, better infrastructure, and dozens more features of a business climate that are calculated to appeal to entrepreneurs. The main difference between the international competition for business and the domestic one is that in the former case, jurisdictions are primarily competing through their legal systems for the legal residence of businesses, while in the latter, states are trying to secure a physical presence of employers.

Many of the jurisdictions that are internationally successful in this the law market are small ones with some affiliation (past or present) with the United Kingdom. These jurisdictions are variously called “tax havens” (a term that was originally meant to conjure up a refuge from taxes, but became a slur intended to suggest they were cheating other places out of tax revenue); “offshore financial centers” (since many are islands); and, now, “international financial centers.” Depending on how you count, there are two to four dozen successful IFCs around the world, including independent countries such as the Bahamas, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Mauritius; territories affiliated with Britain, such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man; and the Cook Islands, which are in free association with New Zealand. As this partial list suggests, IFCs are present around the globe. What exactly do they do?

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Rethinking Legal Education: Demystifying Neurodiversity And Building An Inclusive Future

Jennifer Kindred Mitchell (Baltimore; Google Scholar) & Charlie Amiot (Google Scholar), Rethinking Legal Education: Demystifying Neurodiversity and Building an Inclusive Future:

Neurodiverse (ND) students comprise approximately 1/4 of the law school population, yet traditional legal education often fails to meet their needs. This paper critically examines the prevailing challenges faced by ND students within legal education by identifying the inherent limitations of conventional teaching methods. We first examine ND students' early educational experiences, including detrimental deficit-based messaging and pressures to conform. This context illuminates why many ND law students hide their authentic selves and remain reluctant to disclose needs. We then demystify neurodiversity and common ND cognitive traits to reveal how diverse minds process information and perceive environments. Finally, the paper outlines specific strategies to build inclusion at institutional and instructional levels. Law schools can leverage strengths-based frameworks, universal design in curricula/spaces, neurodiversity informed pedagogy, and DEI efforts. Faculty can employ techniques like teaching in knowledge chunks, incorporating professional identity formation across courses, and designing authentic learning activities.

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• Temple And Tulsa Seek To Hire Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Profs
• If You Want To Be Dean, You Probably Won’t Be Good At It
• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Sunday:

• The Top Five New Tax Papers
• Should You Have Kids In Law School?
• The Unbearable Lightness Of Choosing Children
• It Is Not Best For Man To Eat Alone
• WaPo Op-Ed: Living For The Unremarkable Moments

WaPo Op-Ed: Living For The Unremarkable Moments

Washington Post Op-Ed:  Living for the Unremarkable Moments, by Anne Lamott (Author, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (2024)):

Age grants us permission to be curious about every ordinary day.

In the year since I began writing these little columns on getting older, I’ve seen death up close a few times. One man I know has the same devastating, angry variety of Alzheimer’s that my mom had. A dear old girlfriend has the gentle, spaced-out version, as if dementia had freed the tender prisoner all locked up since childhood. When her mind grew soft, we saw the prison bars of a lifetime collapse.

I would like to put in an order, while they’re still available, for the latter.

But we have no choice in the matter. These days, all I can bank on is love. Much of the rest departs. Even our bodies shrink smaller and then smaller. Carl Sagan said about all of us, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” This is doubly true for the elderly.

Love emerges flagrantly as the real coin of the realm. The people I’ve spent significant time with at the end of their lives do not talk about their degrees, promotions or having successfully kept their weight down. They talk about the times and places of love. Loving memories are the fields in which we walk with them near the end. ...

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It Is Not Best For Man To Eat Alone

Christianity Today op-ed: It Is Not Best for Man to Eat Alone, by Anna Broadway (Author, Solo Planet: How Singles Help the Church Recover Our Calling (2024)):

When the waiter brought out my long-awaited high tea that day, I didn’t expect I’d still be grieving it decades later.

I was 21 and enjoying my first “real” spring break during a debt-building week away in London. After years of devouring chaste romances set in England, I’d learned that Harrods was the best place to experience the glories of scones, clotted cream, and tiny sandwiches, all served on tiers of gleaming china and, of course, washed down with hot tea. So on my inaugural trip across the sea, it seemed only right to indulge my credit card’s largesse on a high tea at Harrods. Alone.

As I looked around the room that day, I knew I’d made a grave mistake. Not even the tender scones and decadent clotted cream could balance the bitter taste of regret. They worsened it. With each new delight, I felt more keenly the lack of someone to share my enjoyment with.

When I was doing fieldwork for my book on singleness, someone told me it might be worse to eat alone than sleep alone. Eating alone is certainly a problem for people who live by themselves. But with 21st-century work schedules, sports practices, and other structural realities, even those with seemingly “built-in” meal companions in spouses or children or roommates often dine solo too. When we do share supper, allergies and dietary restrictions can create other divides. This shift has even changed apartment and home designs as dining rooms fall out of fashion.

Sometimes, the solitude of a meal alone feels welcome. Perhaps an introvert drained by a day of meetings wants nothing more than time alone to decompress. And for some harried parents, a quiet cup of coffee—a reward for getting up before the rest of the household—might feel like a rare and precious solace.

But for Christians, the question of how and with whom we eat involves more than our own preferences. What is God’s design for our meals?

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The Unbearable Lightness Of Choosing Children

Dispatch Faith, The Unbearable Lightness of Choosing Children, by Michael Reneau (The Dispatch) & Hannah Anderson (Author, Life Under the Sun: The Unexpectedly Good News of Ecclesiastes (2023)):

Pronatalist arguments—that in order to be a well functioning society we need to be having more babies—are nothing new. But the resurfacing of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s 2021 “childless cat lady” remarks has added a new, overtly partisan dynamic to the conversation.

Few religious Americans would argue that having more children won’t have positive effects for society as a whole, but today Hannah Anderson argues that our reasons for having children matter: Do we think having children is good because they help us right what we might regard as a wayward societal ship? Or is having children good because … it’s good to have children?

Anderson’s argument is a bit more substantive than that, and the words “grace and hope” factor prominently. On that point: Before my wife and I said “I do,” folks told us being married would reveal to us our own selfishness in spades. That was true, but in that regard, being a parent has eclipsed marriage (which before we had kids felt more like an 24/7 honeymoon with jobs thrown in). My own mistakes in parenting my four kids have underscored my often errant understanding of God. At times I am unloving or unkind to my children because in my folly I take him to be unloving or unkind. Other times I am too removed or uninvolved because I fail to see how much he cares for his people.

That’s why I appreciate what Anderson writes about bringing tiny people into this world and caring for them as best you can: It must be shot through with grace and hope, not agendas and culture-warring.

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Should You Have Kids In Law School?

Update:  The Unbearable Lightness Of Choosing Children

Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed: Should You Have Kids … In Grad School, by Anastasia Berg (UC-Irvine) & Rachel Wiseman (Managing Editor, The Point):

The role of children and family in private and public life has become a flashpoint in the public discourse. The musician Charli XCX mused about whether she should have a baby on her summer-defining album Brat. JD Vance’s comments on “childless cat ladies” dominated several news cycles and caused an unexpected public-relations crisis for the Trump campaign. The question has become so heated, and so unavoidable, that some have begun to wonder aloud: “Why is 2024 suddenly about kids?” Not content to leave such questions to the pundits, public intellectuals including Becca Rothfeld, Melinda Cooper, Mary Gaitskill, Ross Douthat, and Tyler Harper Austin have entered the fray.

The topic has hit a nerve — perhaps above all among those in the progressive and liberal chattering classes, for whom the question of whether to have kids has always been fraught: How could people, especially women, reconcile children with intellectual and creative ambition? With feminist commitments? With the grueling professional demands of academe?

In our recent book, What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice, we discuss the forces animating this public anxiety. Recently we sat down to talk about how scholarly environments can exacerbate these tensions and whether academics can move beyond ambivalence when it comes to children.

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new paper debuting on the list at #2.

1. [1470 Downloads]  Of Losing Citizenship, Tropes, and Missed Opportunity, by Laura Snyder (Association of Americans Resident Overseas)
2. [325 Downloads]  Non-(Fully) Harmonised Excise Taxes and Irrebuttable Presumptions, by Rita de la Feria (Leeds; Google Scholar) 
3. [295 Downloads]  Tax Regulations After Loper Bright, by Andy Grewal (Iowa; Google Scholar)
4. [267 Downloads]  International Tax Scholarship and International Tax Activism, by Wolfgang Schön (Max Planck) (reviewed by Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) here)
5. [240 Downloads]  Flow-Through Entities and the OECD Pillar Two, by Leopoldo Parada (Kings College; Google Scholar)

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

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Patrick Lynch (Law & Liberty), Yale Law School's Keith Whittington: ‘A Conservative Free-Speech Rock Star’
2. ABA Journal, St. Thomas College of Law Reinstates Fired Tenured Professor, Will Start Termination Hearings
3. Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Noah Feldman, Harvard), Radical Legal Academics May Regret Their Attacks On The Constitution 
4. Steven Chung (Tax Attorney, Los Angeles), Closing Of Golden Gate Law School Leaves Students And Alumni In A Bind
5. Alabama Symposium, Legal Education — Our History, Our Future
6. Nikita Aggarwal (Miami), Survey Of Law Fellowships And VAPs (2022-23 & 2023-24)
7. Law360, Chicago Bears Settle Hiring Bias Suit From White Male Law Student 
8. Washington University Symposium, Advancing DEI In Legal Education And The Legal Profession
9. ABA Journal, Moneybor Lawyers: Should ‘Relative Performance Measure’ Replace Billed Hours In Determining Attorney Productivity?
10. NCBE, July Multistate Bar Exam Mean Score Is Highest Since 2013 

Tax:

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Form Trumps Substance On Phantom S Corp Income 
2. Tax Prof Jobs
   • George Washington
   • Illinois
   • Louisville 
   • Memphis
   • Minnesota
   • New England
   • North Carolina 
   • Ohio State
   • Rutgers
   • Temple
   • St. Thomas-FL
   • Tulsa
3. Stephanie Hoffer (Indiana-McKinney), Disaster! Tax Legislation In Crises
4. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
5. Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo), Presentation Of Algorithmic Tax Ownership At Vanderbilt
6. Steven Bank (UCLA), Presentation Of The Golden Age Of Tax Dodging: Celebrities, Hollywood, And The Publicity Effect Today At Temple
7. Michael Simkovic (USC) & Meirav Furth-Matzkin (Tel-Aviv University), Taxing Contractual Complexity
8. Call For Tax Papers And Panels, Law & Society Annual Meeting
9. Society Of Legal Scholars, Tax Presentations At The Annual Conference
10. Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, Conference On Reimagining Global Tax Governance

Faith:

1. Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk’s Walk With Jesus 
2. Washington Post Op-Ed (Allison Raskin), Why Don't I Have Any Close Friends? I Live In Los Angeles.
3. New York Times Op-Ed (Matthew Schmitz), Catholic Converts Like JD Vance Are Reshaping Republican Politics
4. Christianity Today, The Olympics’ Most Iconic Photo Has A Christian Message
5. Zach Rausch (NYU), Religious Teens Are Happier Than Their Secular Peers — Dramatically So For Religious Conservatives

If You Want To Be Dean, You Probably Won’t Be Good At It

Harvard Gazette, You Want to be Boss. You Probably Won’t Be Good At It.:

One of the paper’s most surprising findings is that people who self-nominate to be managers perform worse than those randomly assigned. Why is that?

In the study, we randomly assign the role of manager. That was half of the experiment. In the other half, we asked people which role they wanted, and we assigned the role of manager to the people with the greatest preferences for being in charge.

We found that people with the greatest preference for being in charge are, on average, worse than randomly assigned managers. It’s hard to know exactly why because there are a lot of factors in play, but we show evidence in the paper that they are overconfident in their own capabilities, and they think they understand other people better than they do. We all know people like that.

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Temple And Tulsa Seek To Hire Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Profs

Temple Law, Faculty Posting: 

Temple University Beasley School of Law seeks to fill several faculty positions beginning in Fall 2025. We welcome applications from both entry-level and lateral candidates, and we will consider applicants in all subject areas. Areas of particular interest include: legal writing, health law, tax, trust & estates, labor/employment law, torts, and business law. Candidates should submit materials at https://law.temple.edu/engage/prospective-faculty-application and may also direct inquiries to Tom Lin, Chair of the Faculty Selection Committee.

Tulsa Law, Faculty Posting: 

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Narotzki Reviews Escajeda's Bad Tax Policy Breeds Bad Blood Between Songwriters And Poets

This week, Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) reviews an article by Hilary G. Escajeda (Mississippi College; Google Scholar), Bad Tax Policy Breeds Bad Blood Between Songwriters and Poets 183 Tax Notes Fed. 1625 (May 27, 2024).

Escajeda offers a compelling and thought-provoking critique of the U.S. tax system's treatment of artists, an area that is not often discussed. With a lively and accessible writing style, Escajeda highlights an important but often overlooked disparity in how tax policy favors songwriters over poets. Using popular cultural references, such as Taylor Swift’s music, the article skillfully engages readers while discussing the more technical aspects of tax law which makes the topic relatable and easier to digest.

Escajeda’s main argument is clear and very persuasive: current U.S. tax laws offer preferential capital gains treatment to songwriters but at the same time subject poets and other non-musical artists to ordinary income tax rates. 

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, St. Thomas College Of Law Reinstates Fired Tenured Professor, Will Start Termination Hearings
• ABA Legal Rebels Podcast, Tests Into And Out Of Law Schools—What’s Changing And Why
• Sara Berman (USC) & Chance Meyer (New England), Major Reform With Minor Risk: Implementation Of Change Initiatives As A Learning Challenge
• Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Noah Feldman, Harvard),  Radical Legal Academics May Regret Their Attacks On The Constitution
• Steven Chung (Tax Attorney, Los Angeles), The Announcement Of Golden Gate School Of Law's Closing Puts Its Students And Graduates In A Bind
• Diverse: Issues In Higher Education, Compounding Inequities In Law School Are Not Insurmountable
• G. Patrick Lynch (Law & Liberty), Yale Law School's Keith Whittington: ‘A Conservative Free-Speech Rock Star’

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Harris to Expand Small Business Tax Relief to Boost Startups
• Bloomberg, Harris Pushes 28% Capital Gains Tax Rate on $1 Million Earners
• Bloomberg, Trump Vows 15% Corporate Tax
• Inequality.org, If We Want Better Care, We Need a Better Tax Code
• New York Times, Can Democrats Stop the ‘Tax Doom Loop’?
• New York Times, Harris, Proposing a Tax Break, Makes a Play for Small-Business Owners

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Next Week’s Tax Workshop

Tuesday, September 10: Ellora Derenoncourt (Princeton; Google Scholar) will present Wealth of Two Nations: The US Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020 (online appendix) (with Chi Hyun Kim (University of Bonn), Moritz Kuhn (University of Mannheim; Google Scholar) & Moritz Schularick (Kiel Institute, Sciences Po Paris; Google Scholar)) as part of the NYU Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Daniel Shaviro. 

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Satterthwaite Presents Taxing Nannies Today At Florida

Emily Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar) presents Taxing Nannies (with Ariel Jurow Kleiman (USC; Google Scholar) & Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar)) (reviewed by Michelle Layser (San Diego; Google Scholar) here and by Susan Morse (Texas; Google Scholar) here) at Florida today as part of its Tax Colloquium hosted by Yariv Brauner:

Nannies in the U.S. work long hours for low wages and risk retaliation if they complain. Informal, or “off the books,” work exacerbates their precarity, keeping it secret from state and federal tax agencies, as well as employment and labor agencies. Yet we have little understanding of how nannies navigate the tax reporting that renders them formal or informal.

This Article investigates nannies’ preferences for or against formal employment and tax reporting, the reasons behind such preferences, and how such preferences inform nannies’ relationships with their employers and legal institutions more broadly. The Article employs a multi-method research approach that includes an original and innovative survey of nannies and an analysis of nannies’ tax-related posts on the online forum Reddit. To supplement this research, the Article also discusses interviews with fifteen subject-matter experts regarding industry norms, common challenges nannies face, and policy reforms.

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Oxford Hosts Conference Today On Reimagining Global Tax Governance

The Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation hosts a conference on Reimagining Global Tax Governance today: 

Session #1: Goals of Global Tax Organisations 

• John Vella (Oxford) (chair)
• Mindy Herzfeld (Florida), Global Tax Governance: Models for International Tax Coordination
• Alice Pirlot (Geneva Graduate Institute), International Organisations & Tax Law Making
• Ivan Ozai (York University; Google Scholar) (discussant)

Session #2: Decision Making in Global Tax Organization

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Tax Presentations At Society Of Legal Scholars Annual Conference

U.S. Tax Prof presentations at the Society of Legal Scholars' Annual Conference at the University of Bristol:

Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar), Fiscal Autonomy and the Legacy of Imperialism:

Within the United States, two subnational governments have distinctive powers to tax: Native tribes and U.S. territories. Native tribes can tax their own members and the commercial activities of non-Indian actors on reservations. The Supreme Court has grounded this power in both tribal sovereignty and the federal objective of fostering tribal self-governance. But its jurisprudence—in the form of preemption, plenary power, and tax doctrine—has hollowed out the Native tax base, forcing tribes to compete fiercely with Congress, states, and localities for revenue. By contrast, the U.S. territories face no tax competition. Their residents are generally exempt from federal income and estate taxes, and Congress has even delegated to some territories the authority to deviate from federal income-tax rules. Pursuant to this delegation, Puerto Rico has enacted a host of tax incentives to attract the ultra-wealthy to migrate from the mainland, fueling accusations of tax shelter and settler colonialism. The divergent tax treatment of Native and territorial communities paradoxically rests on the same rationale: fiscal autonomy.

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