NY Times: What's God Got To Do With It? The Rise Of Christian Nationalism In American Politics

New York Times, What's God Got to Do With It? The Rise of Christian Nationalism In American Politics:

Esau Macaulley and Katherine Stewart on how the G.O.P weaponized Christianity — and where we go from here

Christian nationalism has been empowered in American politics since the rise of Donald Trump. From “Stop the Steal” to the storming of the U.S. Capitol and now, the overturn of Roe v. Wade — Christian nationalist rhetoric has undergirded it all. But given that a majority of Americans identify as Christian, faith also isn’t going anywhere in our politics. So what would a better relationship between church and state look like?

To discuss, Jane Coaston brings together two people who are at the heart of the Christian nationalism debate. Katherine Stewart is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism and has reported on the Christian right for over a decade. Esau McCaulley is a contributing writer for Times Opinion and theologian-in-residence at Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago.

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The Secret Of Vin Scully's Success: Faith

Los Angeles and baseball fans everywhere are mourning the death of Vin Scully at age 94. Vin was the voice of the Dodgers (and Los Angeles) for 67 years. My dear fried and former colleague Bob Cochran sent me this wonderful interview with Vin for my Sunday faith posts: 

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Bloomberg Law Announces Inaugural Law School Innovation Program

Bloomberg Law Announces Inaugural Law School Innovation Program:

Bloomberg Law today announced a new program to recognize law schools and their faculty and staff that have implemented and led innovative programs into their curricula that advance new methodologies and approaches to student instruction, legal technology implementation and usage, experiential learning, and other facets of legal education.

"At Bloomberg Law, we are deeply committed to innovation," said Joe Breda, President, Bloomberg Law. "Through this new program, we are excited to encourage and raise awareness of the importance of innovation in legal education by recognizing the law school faculty, staff, and administrators who are pioneering educational innovations that benefit their students, their schools, and the legal field."

Applications will be evaluated on the criteria of innovation, impact on students, ability to advance the legal industry, and replicability. Submissions will be accepted through September 6, 2022.  More information and submission guidelines are available here.

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Case Western Seeks To Hire An Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Prof

Case Western Reserve University Academic Careers, Open Rank Faculty Positions (tenured/tenure-track) - School of Law:

Case Western Reserve University School of Law invites applications for tenured or tenure-track faculty positions, beginning July 2023.

The school is seeking entry-level candidates with demonstrated law teaching and scholarship potential, as well as lateral candidates with strong scholarly track records and substantial law teaching experience. Areas of interest for teaching and scholarship include environmental law, property, copyright, trademark, torts, tax, commercial law, and family law. Appointment will be considered at the Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor level, based upon prior teaching experience and scholarship. Positions may include the opportunity to teach in the Kramer Law Clinic, or administrative responsibilities in the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law or the Spangenberg Center for Law, Technology, and the Arts.

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WSJ: Colleges (And Law Schools) Scale Back Covid Precautions For Fall Semester — Pandemic Phase Is Over

Wall Street Journal, Colleges Scale Back Covid Precautions for Fall, Saying Pandemic Phase Over:

Colleges this fall are no longer treating Covid-19 as an emergency upending their operations, shifting to eliminate mask requirements and mandatory coronavirus testing and letting students who contract the virus isolate in their dorms with their roommates.

With easy access to vaccinations and low hospitalization rates among college-aged adults—even during the latest surge in BA.5 subvariant cases—administrators said it is time to lift or at least rethink restrictions and redefine the virus as endemic, not a pandemic. That means scaling back mass testing, removing bans on large indoor gatherings and preparing for a fall term that more closely resembles life before Covid.

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A Response To Penn Dean Ruger’s Letter Calling For A Major Sanction Against Professor Amy Wax

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Seth Barrett Tillman (Maynooth University School of Law; Google Scholar), A Response to Dean Ruger’s Letter to Professor Gadsden, University of Pennsylvania Faculty Senate Chair, Calling for the Imposition of a Major Sanction Against Professor Wax:

This is a short statement responding to the misuse of contestable historical materials to achieve ideological ends in the guise of the discipline of an academic colleague. It is a reflection on the dangers of political correctness in today's academic environment.

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Knoll & Mason: Bibb Balancing

Michael S. Knoll (Penn) & Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar), Bibb Balancing, 91 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. __ (2023):

Courts and commentators have long understood dormant Commerce Clause doctrine to contain two types of cases: discrimination and undue burdens. This Article argues for a more nuanced understanding that divides undue burdens into single-state burdens—which arise from the application of a single state’s law alone—and mismatch burdens, which arise from legal diversity. Although the Supreme Court purports to apply Pike balancing in all undue-burden cases, we show that the Court’s approach in mismatch cases differs substantially. Specifically, unlike in single-state cases, balancing in mismatch cases involves an implicit and potentially problematic comparison by the Court between the challenged state’s regulation and those of other states. We label analysis in mismatch cases “Bibb balancing,” after the famous mudflaps case, and we show that mismatch cases present the Court with a more challenging set of issues than do other types of dormant Commerce Clause cases. 

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The Top 100 Law Schools, Based On 5-, 10-, And 15-Year Rolling Average U.S. News Rankings

Bradley A. Areheart (Tennessee), The Top 100 Law Reviews: A Reference Guide Based on Historical USNWR Data:

The best proxy for how other law professors react and respond to publishing in main, or flagship, law reviews is the US News and World Report (USNWR) rankings. This paper utilizes historical USNWR data to rank the top 100 law reviews. The USNWR rankings are important in shaping many – if not most – law professors’ perceptions about the relative strength of a law school (and derivatively, the home law review). This document contains a chart that is sorted by the 10-year rolling average for each school, but it also contains the 5-year and 15-year rolling averages. This paper also describes my methodology and responds to a series of frequently asked questions. The document was last updated in August 2022.

Here are the Top 75 law schools based on their 5-year rolling average overall U.S. News ranking:

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Gianni: Supervisory Approval Of Penalties—The Opening Of A Graev Pandora's Box

Monica Gianni (CSUN), Supervisory Approval of Penalties: The Opening of a Graev Pandora's Box, 75 Tax Law. __ (2022):

Section 6751(b) of the Internal Revenue Code requires supervisory approval in writing prior to assessment of certain penalties. Enacted in 1998 as part of the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) Restructuring and Reform Act, the statute’s purpose was to prevent IRS agents from using penalties as bargaining chips. The section remained essentially dormant for over 20 years, with both the IRS and taxpayers accepting the position that approval needed to be obtained only prior to assessment. The trilogy of Graev cases and a decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Chai v. Commissioner changed the § 6751(b) landscape completely, opening a Pandora’s box of taxpayers using § 6751(b) to avoid penalties on the technicality of no-written-supervisory approval. Hundreds of court cases have followed, resulting in cases inconsistently interpreting § 6751(b) and well-counseled taxpayers avoiding tax penalties.

This article examines the enactment of § 6751(b) and explores in detail the Graev and Chai decisions.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Elite Universities Are Out of Touch. Blame The Campus.

New York Times Op-Ed:  Elite Universities Are Out of Touch. Blame the Campus., by Nick Burns:

Looking out the window of a plane flying over Boulder, Colorado, recently, I was reminded how much American universities stick out from their surroundings.

I’d never been to Boulder, or visited the University of Colorado’s flagship campus there, but even from 30,000 feet, I could tell exactly where it started and ended. The red-tile roofs and quadrangles of the campus formed a little self-contained world, totally distinct from the grid of single-family homes that surrounded it.

In urban universities, the dividing line between the campus and the community can be even starker. At the University of Southern California, for example, students must check in with security officers when entering the gates of the university at night. At Yale, castle-like architecture makes the campus feel like a fortified enclave.

The elite American university today is a paradox: Even as concerns about social justice continue to preoccupy students and administrations, these universities often seem to be out of touch with the society they claim to care so much about. Many on the right and in the center believe universities have become ideological echo chambers. Some on the left see them as “sepulchers for radical thought.”

These critiques aren’t new — for generations people have thought of American universities as ivory towers, walled off from reality — but they’ve taken on new urgency as public debate over the state of higher education has intensified in recent years. Ideology and institutional culture get frequent attention, but a key factor is often ignored: geography.

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Federalist Society: Are IRS Defenses Crumbling?

Federalist Society, Are IRS Defenses Crumbling?:

The continuous stream of regulations and other guidance the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must publish to inform the public how it is going to implement, administer, and enforce the frequent, numerous, and complicated changes to the tax laws, along with the high dollar stakes involved, create constant opportunities and incentives to challenge the IRS.

Some contend that the IRS’s ability to defend itself against these challenges seems to be vanishing as one after another of their recent court cases have been unsuccessful.

Our speakers discussed this in more detail, along with what they might portend for how the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department issue future guidance. Another direction to watch is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue: will Congress begin to do a better job drafting laws and providing instructions and guidance about how they are to be implemented, administered, and enforced?

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ABA Gaining Public Support In Proposal To Make Law School Admission Tests Optional

Following up on my previous post, So Far, Public Comments Largely Support ABA Proposal To Make Law School Admission Tests Optional:  Law.com, ABA Gaining Public Support in Proposal to Make Law School Admission Tests Optional:

So far, support for doing away with the standardized testing requirement for American Bar Association-accredited law schools is outweighing those who want to see the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) remain as a requirement. ...

Since mid-June—when Law.com reported that eight comments that had been posted—that number has nearly doubled with less than a month left in the 90-day comment-and-notice period.

The proposed changes include making admission tests for law school, such as the LSAT, optional instead of mandatory. ...

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Florida Tax Review Publishes New Issue

The Florida Tax Review has published Vol. 25, No. 1 (Fall 2021):

• Keith Fogg (Harvard), The Role of Offset in the Collection of Federal Taxes, 25 Fla. Tax Rev. 1 (2021)
• Philip Hackney (Pittsburgh), Dark Money Darker? IRS Shutters Collection of Donor Data, 25 Fla. Tax Rev. 140 (2021)
• Chris William Sanchirico (Penn; Google Scholar), Why the Optimal Long-Run Tax Rate on Capital is Zero . . . or Very High: The Missing Explanation, 25 Fla. Tax Rev. 216 (2021)
• Clinton G. Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar), Democracy Avoidance in Tax Lawmaking, 25 Fla. Tax Rev. 272 (2021)
• Jeffrey H. Kahn (Florida State), Miles A. Romney (Florida State) & John Treu (West Virginia), Too Much SALT? The Nuanced Impact of the State and Local Tax Deduction Cap on Pass-Through Business Taxpayers, 25 Fla. Tax Rev. 339 (2021)
• Michael Simkovic (USC; Google Scholar) & Eric J. Allen (UC-Riverside; Google Scholar), Work Hours & Income Tax Cuts: Evidence from Federal-State Tax Interactions, 25 Fla. Tax Rev. 388 (2021)

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Stephen Carter, Deborah Merritt, And The Bar Exam

Deborah J. Merritt (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Stephen Carter on the Bar Exam:

Eminent Yale Professor Stephen Carter has penned has penned a thoughtful critique of the bar exam [RIP to the LSAT? Let’s Kill the Bar Exam, Too]. Professor Carter notes the exam’s similarities to the LSAT, which some law schools have abandoned as an admissions requirement. In addition to their shared affection for multiple choice questions, the LSAT and bar exam both constrain the diversity of our profession. Despite the bar exam’s disproportionate racial impact, Professor Carter notes, the exam has never been properly validated. Here, he cites a column I wrote in 2017 for the AALS Newsletter.

As I wrote then, state bar examiners and NCBE designed the bar exam around a definition of minimum competence that they “felt in their bones.” NCBE did not conduct a practice analysis of the knowledge and skills that new lawyers need until 2012. That analysis supported some of the doctrinal subjects that NCBE was testing, but not the depth of memorization required by the exam. The analysis also confirmed that skills like researching the law, fact gathering, negotiating, and interviewing were essential for law practice–all skills conspicuously absent from the bar exam.

NCBE conducted another practice analysis in 2019, which once again exposed numerous flaws in the exam. My own research conducted with Logan Cornett and IAALS (the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System) [Building A Better Bar Exam: The Twelve Building Blocks Of Minimum Competence], reached a similar conclusion: the written bar exam tests both too much and too little. It restricts admission to the profession (especially of people of color) without adequately protecting the public. ...

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DePaul Seeks To Hire An Entry Level Tax Prof

DePaul Faculty Jobs, Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) - Law (23-24):

DePaul University College of Law invites applications from entry-level candidates for a tenure-track position expected to begin July 1, 2023. We have particular interest in the areas of Business Law, Contracts, Tax, Commercial Law, and Antitrust. 

DePaul Law is committed to improving society by educating purpose-driven lawyers who will serve their clients, the legal profession, and the broader community in ways that enhance access to justice and promote equitable policies and processes. We enthusiastically encourage applicants who would enrich the diversity of our community to apply. ...

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Listening To Our Students: Fostering Resilience And Engagement To Promote Culture Change In Legal Education

Ann Sinsheimer (Pittsburgh) & Omid Fotuhi (Pittsburgh), Listening to Our Students: Fostering Resilience and Engagement to Promote Culture Change in Legal Education, 26 Legal Writing: The J. Legal Writing Inst. 81 (2022):

In this Article, we describe a dynamic program of research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law that uses mindset to promote resilience and engagement in law students. For the last three years, we have used tailored, well-timed, psychological interventions to help students bring adaptive mindsets to the challenges they face in law school. The act of listening to our students has been the first step in designing interventions to improve their experience, and it has become a kind of intervention in itself. Through this work, we have learned that simply asking our law students about their experiences and listening carefully to their answers helps create an environment that supports academic and professional growth.

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Henderson: The End Of The 'End Of History' Era — Extreme Wealth Concentration

Bill Henderson (Indiana), The End of the “End of History” Era:

Apolitical technicians working in an ahistorical profession. What are the odds of a happy ending?

The graphic above summarizes the U.S. top marginal income tax rate from 1913 (the year the 16th Amendment was ratified by the states) to 2021. One clear takeaway is that for the vast bulk of the 20th century, the wealthy paid much higher taxes.

As the graphic suggests, however, that changed with the election of Ronald Reagan, whose inaugural address launched an ideological revolution with a simple and memorable message: “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Reagan Inaugural Address (Jan 21, 1981). Thus, with the public’s consent, top marginal tax rates were slashed throughout the 1980s. At the 1988 Republican Convention, George H.W. Bush (Reagan’s VP) spoke the words, “read my lips: no new tax,” which helped him defeat Michael Dukakis in the general election. See Lily Rothman, “The Story Behind George H.W. Bush’s Famous ‘Read My Lips, No New Taxes’ Promise,” Time, Dec 1, 2018. Yet, the political mood of the late 1980s was also strongly anti-deficit. In 1990, when Congress enacted pay-as-you-go rules for federal budgeting, Bush, who was saddled with a massive Saving & Loan bailout, agreed to increase the top marginal rate from 28% to 31% — an act that arguably ended his political career. See Howard Gleckman, “Reading President Bush’s Lips,” Tax Policy Center, Dec 5, 2018.

Since the early 1990s, much of the electorate has enjoyed the political stability and relative economic prosperity of the “End of History” era, which is a reference to Francis Fukuyama’s famous 1989 essay and 1992 book. Surveying the geopolitical landscape, including the market-based reforms being implemented in China and the former Soviet Union, Fukuyama concluded that there were no longer any “viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.” Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” The National Interest (Summer 1989) at 3. Full global realization and consciousness may not occur for a few more decades, as small-scale governments based on nationalism or religion would likely linger. But, Fukuyama argued, the outcome of history was no longer in doubt.

I would argue that over the last three decades, a large portion of the legal profession (myself included) slipped into a comfortable “End of History” cocoon. As we built our careers, sent our kids to highly ranked universities, and monitored the size and status of our retirement accounts, we took political stability as a given. Thus, we became oblivious to growing fissures and cracks that might threaten the rule of law. Can an ahistorical profession be learned? ...

Today’s post is a bridge between Part I, which focused on the original Gilded Age lawyers (Post 312), and next Sunday’s Part II, which will carefully consider three empirically based theories of national decline.

In Part I, I acknowledged that for nearly four decades, virtually all my life decisions were premised on the unstated assumption of ongoing (perhaps unending?) political stability and relative economic prosperity (the unstated assumption). However, after living through the national and global turmoil of the last several years, including past and potential future coup attempts against the U.S. government, my unstated assumption has been revealed to be foolish and decadent wishcasting. ...

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Eliminating Tuition For Yale Law Students In Need Will Help Diversify The Legal Profession

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  ABC News, Why Yale Law’s Dean Says Eliminating Tuition for Students in Need Benefits the Legal Profession:

As students prepare to return to school in the fall, one Ivy League law school has a new scholarship aimed at broadening access to legal education by eliminating tuition for students with financial needs.

Yale Law School's Hurst Horizon Scholarships will erase tuition and pay for college fees and health care costs for law students with the greatest financial need. It's a first-of-its-kind scholarship that is creating new conversations about what law schools can do to diversify the legal profession.

Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken, the first woman to serve in the role, tells ABC News the scholarship was needed. "We have so many people from low-income backgrounds, who are not going to law school to pursue change because of the debt that waits on the other end for them," she said.

The scholarship will be given to any Juris Doctor student whose family income is below the federal poverty guidelines and whose assets are below $150,000. The law school tells ABC News that more than 45 students this fall will qualify to be awarded more than $70,000 per year to cover tuition, fees and health insurance. ...

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Amarante: States As Laboratories For Charitable Compliance—An Empirical Study

Eric Franklin Amarante (Tennessee; Google Scholar), States as Laboratories for Charitable Compliance: An Empirical Study, 90 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 445 (2022):

Each year, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) awards 501(c)(3), tax exempt status to thousands of organizations that do not meet the statutory requirements for charities. This is because the IRS, facing increasingly severe budget cuts, adopted a woefully inadequate application process that fails to identify even the most obvious of unworthy applicants. To illustrate this problem, this Article reviews the formation documents of 500 charities that received 501(c)(3) status in 2018 using this new application process. The results of this study are dramatic as they are upsetting: In Florida, only 41.11% of the charities in the study met the statutory requirements necessary for 501(c)(3) status. In Ohio, that number is 33.33%, meaning that two-thirds of the organizations using the new application process were incorrectly awarded 501(c)(3) status. The worst performing state in the study, Idaho, boasted only 22.08% of organizations meeting the statutory test.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Last 2 Winners of ABA Journal Ross Writing Contest Attended this Workshop
• Above the Law, The Annual Legal Profession Hazing Ritual Strikes Again
• Above the Law, The Bar Exam's Motherhood Penalty Is A Barrier To Entry For The Legal Profession
• Above the Law, Be Prepared To Be Terrified: Bar Exam Horror Stories!
• Above the Law, Still In Russian Prison, Brittney Griner Manages To Wish Her Wife Good Luck On The Bar Exam
• Above the Law, Your Bar Exam Results Won’t Define Your Career
• Daily Business Review, The Pipeline: Is South Florida's Legal Community Doing Enough on Diversity for the Next Generation?

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Virtual Roundtable Tomorrow On Starving The Beast: Ronald Reagan And The Tax Cut Revolution

On behalf of the Ronald Reagan Institute, the Washington, D.C. Office of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library, we invite you to attend the next iteration of the Reagan Scholars Virtual Roundtable Series from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, August 2, 2022. Ronald Reagan Institute will host a virtual roundtable on August 2 from 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET. If you would like to attend, please contact Anthony Eames. 

For this session, we welcome Professor Monica Prasad of Northwestern University. She is the author of Starving the Beast: Ronald Reagan and the Tax Cut Revolution - winner of the best book award in economic sociology. Dr. Brian Domitrovic, Richard S. Strong Scholar at the Laffer Center for Supply-Side Economics, will offer his own comments in response. He is a leading authority on the history of on supply-side economics. See his recent book The Emergence of Arthur Laffer: The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics in Chicago and Washington, 1966-1976.  

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The Fall 2022 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Down 12%, The Most Among Whites (-14%) And The Highest LSAT Bands (-14%)

We are now 100% of the way through Fall 2022 law school admissions season. The number of law school applicants reported by LSAC is down 11.6% compared to last year at this time.

43 of the 199 law schools are experiencing an increase in applications. Applications are up 20 % or more at 4 law schools and 10% or more at 12 law schools:

Applicants are up in only one region: Other (+5.3%); and are down the most in Northwest (-19.2%), Northeast (-18.1%), and Midwest (-15.3%):

Applicants' LSAT scores are down -14.2% in the 170-180 band, -13.8% in the 160-169 band, -10.2% in the 150-159 band, and -10.6% in the 120-149 band:

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Lesson From The Tax Court: Excise Tax On Messed Up IRA Rollover Different From Income Tax

The tax laws are conflicted.  They encourage retirement savings by permitting taxpayers to deduct contributions to their Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA’s).  But that encouragement is hedged by various restrictions and caps as well as a special excise tax imposed on contributions that exceed the applicable caps.  And Congress crosses its fingers if taxpayers take early distributions.  Those can result in penalties as well as inclusion in gross income.  However, Congress uncrosses those fingers if the early distributions are properly rolled into another IRA.

Given these various statutory hedges and crossed-fingers, it’s no wonder that navigating the tax rules for retirement accounts is tricky!  Particularly tricky are managing rollovers from one type of retirement plan to another.  Mistakes there can have both income tax consequences and excise tax consequences.  Thus, we must always keep straight the difference between different types of taxes, just like we saw in last week’s lesson.

This week, we learn how excise tax consequences are different than income tax consequences of a messed up IRA rollover.  In Clair R. Couturier, Jr. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2022-69 (July 6, 2022) (Judge Lauber), the taxpayer escaped a huge income tax liability for messing up some of the rollover rules because the limitation period for assessment had run, but got snagged for a $8.5 million excise tax for excess IRA contributions.  Yeah, we’re talking a lot of money here, putting enough at risk for the taxpayer to hire one of the best tax lawyers in the country to represent him.  Alas, even Lavar Taylor could not pull him out of the $8.5 million hole.  He tried to argue that the IRS was bound by the income tax characterization of the transaction.  The Court rejected that argument because...an excise tax is not an income tax.  Details below the fold. 

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Last Week's Bar Exam: Send In The Clowns

Bloomberg Op-Ed:  Oh, You've Got Tech Woes? Try Taking the Bar, by Stephen Carter (Yale):

Budding lawyers have run into technical issues with the big test’s software for the third year in a row. Can someone please send in the clowns?

[Last] week, tens of thousands of budding lawyers [sat] for the bar examination. For the second year in a row, the big news is about technology. Last July, Examplify — the software used for remote testing — crashed repeatedly. Just weeks before this year’s exam, test-takers who’d bought new Windows laptops were informed that their devices were incompatible with the test.

They were advised to find another to borrow.

I'm no fan of the bar exam, which I consider both pointless and exclusionary. But if it’s going to exist, those in charge shouldn’t be strewing unnecessary technological obstacles in the path of test-takers. Lately, if unintentionally, that’s exactly what’s happened. ...

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Katherine Magbanua Sentenced To Life In Prison, Plus Two 30-Year Sentences, In Dan Markel's Murder; Charlie Adelson Trial In Early 2023
• ABA Tax Section|Tax Analysts Public Service Tax Fellowship Application Deadline Extended
• Listen!: Amplifying The Experiences Of Black Law School Graduates In 2020

Sunday:

• Battle Over 'Wokeness' At Christian Colleges Isn't Just About Politics, It's About Dollars
• WSJ Op-Ed: Religion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It
• LA Times: Jews, Muslims And Others Say Roe vs. Wade Reversal Threatens Their Religious Freedom
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

Battle Over 'Wokeness' At Christian Colleges Isn't Just About Politics, It's About Dollars

Detroit Free Press, Battle Over 'Wokeness' at Christian Colleges Isn't Just About Politics, It's About Dollars:

The latest battle in Christian higher education isn't centered on theological issues, but rather on politics.

For decades, Hillsdale College and Grove City College mirrored each other.

Fiercely independent, neither takes any federal dollars, including government-backed student loans, in order to be exempt from most federal rules.

Located in bucolic settings — Hillsdale in agricultural southern mid-Michigan and Grove City in the hills of western Pennsylvania — one feels smarter simply by stepping on the carefully groomed campuses with spectacular academic buildings, chapels and residence halls. Both have reputations as bastions of conservatism.

But the last two years have started to push the two apart, at least in the minds of their core markets.

Hillsdale, to the delight of conservatives and the consternation of liberals, has continued to burnish its conservative credentials. It has worked closely on education matters with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis  and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.

"The college's belief in genuine classical education and its deep admiration for the principles of the American Founding, as espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, has made it a target for those who oppose such challenges to the status quo of what is now taught in most American institutions of higher education," Hillsdale spokeswoman Emily Davis told the Free Press, adding that Hillsdale wants all students, not just those in Michigan, to have a quality education. "Hillsdale College has been dedicated to pursuing truth and defending liberty since 1844 and has no plans of retreating from that noble effort."

And while Hillsdale alumni, students and faculty have been supportive of the college, alumni, students and faculty at Grove City have been engaged in all-out-war  over whether it is woke.

The two schools represent the newest battle in Christian higher education, one that isn't centered on theological issues such as creationism or who is God, but rather on whether Donald Trump won the last election or whether Black people are still targeted by systematic racism in America. It's about politics brought to campus, witnessed by students who arrive as self-styled culture warriors, armed with smartphones and social media.

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WSJ Op-Ed: Religion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  Religion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It, by Byron R. Johnson (Baylor; Pepperdine; Google Scholar) & Jeff Levin (Baylor):

Reports of religion’s decline in America have been exaggerated. You’ve heard the story: Churchgoers are dwindling in number while “Nones”—those who tell pollsters they have no religious affiliation—are multiplying as people abandon their faith and join the ranks of atheists and agnostics. Headlines declare that the U.S. is secularizing along the lines of Europe. From Britain’s Daily Mail in 2013: “Religion could disappear by 2041 because people will have replaced God with possessions, claims leading psychologist.”

These conclusions are based on analyses that are so flawed as to be close to worthless. In a new study with our colleagues Matt Bradshaw and Rodney Stark, we seek to set the record straight [Are Religious “Nones” Really Not Religious?: Revisiting Glenn, Three Decades Later, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, Vol. 18, Art. 7 (2022)].

Data from five recent U.S. population surveys point to the vibrancy, ubiquity and growth of religion in the U.S. Americans are becoming more religious, and religious institutions are thriving. Consistent with some previous studies but contrary to widely held assumptions, many people who report no religious affiliation—and even many self-identified atheists and agnostics—exhibit substantial levels of religious practice and belief. ...

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LA Times: Jews, Muslims And Others Say Roe vs. Wade Reversal Threatens Their Religious Freedom

Following up on my previous post, Does Religious Freedom Protect A Right To An Abortion?:  Los Angeles Times, Jews, Muslims and Others Say Roe vs. Wade Reversal Threatens Their Religious Freedom:

For 25 years Rabbi Barry Silver has served as the spiritual leader of L’Dor Va-Dor, a progressive synagogue in Boynton Beach, Fla. Like most congregational rabbis, he offers a Jewish perspective on major life events, giving weekly sermons, performing weddings, funerals and baby namings, and occasionally counseling congregants wrestling with whether to have an abortion.

Silver tells his congregation that contrary to Roman Catholic and evangelical teachings, which state that life begins at conception, traditional Jewish law, known as Halakha, says life begins at birth: when the baby draws its first breath. Before then, the mother’s physical and emotional well-being is paramount.

In some extreme cases — such as when the mother’s life is at stake — an abortion is not just permitted by Jewish law, but required.

“Right in the beginning of the Torah, Genesis states that God formed the human, Adam, from the dust of the Earth, like you create a work of pottery. Then he breathed the breath of life in him and he lived,” Silver said. “We equate breathing with living.”

For decades, antiabortion Catholic and evangelical Christian perspectives have dominated the religious conversation around abortion. But people of faith hold a variety of views on the issue, rooted in their own traditions, teachings and laws.

Muslim teachings hold that the soul is breathed into a fetus 120 days after conception, and other religious groups — Unitarians, the Oklevueha Native American Church, and the Satanic Temple (a global organization that is headquartered in Salem, Mass., and that, despite its name, doesn’t actually worship the Prince of Darkness) — considerreproductive choice and bodily autonomy to be sacred.  ...

Silver, a progressive activist who also works as a civil rights attorney, made headlines this month after he filed a religious liberty lawsuit challenging a Florida law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. He said the ban makes abortion unlawful even in situations in which it’s mandated by Jewish law. Silver is the first religious leader to file such a suit; legal experts say that after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, he won’t be the last. ...

Jews in particular are waking up to what abortion restrictions at the state level could mean for their religious freedom. ...

Michael Helfand, a professor at Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law, says Jews are well positioned to argue that abortion restrictions violate an individual’s religious liberties, especially in states where so-called religious freedom restoration laws provide heightened protections for religious exercise. ...

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list. The #1 paper is #1,019 among 16,932 tax papers in all-time downloads:

1. [636 Downloads]  Tax Administration and Technology: From Enhanced to No-Cooperation?, by João Félix Pinto Nogueira (Catholic University Portugal & IBFD; Google Scholar)
2. [463 Downloads]  Tax Neutrality Regimes and GloBE, by Leopoldo Parada (Leeds; Google Scholar)
3. [327 Downloads]  Congress Takes Its War On Cash To Digital Assets: Understanding Tax Code Section 6050I, by Abraham Sutherland (Virginia; Google Scholar)
4. [312 Downloads]  The Treatment of Tax Incentives under Pillar Two, by Belisa Ferreira Liotti (Google Scholar), Joy Waruguru Ndubai, Ruth Wamuyu, Ivan Lazarov (Google Scholar) & Jeffrey Owens (all of Vienna University of Economics and Business)
5. [268 Downloads]  Preventing Unacceptable Tax Treaty Overrides, by Craig Elliffe (Auckland; Google Scholar)

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. New York Times Op-Ed, U.S. Inequality Is Much Less When You Measure Spending Power (Including Government Transfer Payments) As Well As Income And Wealth
2. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: No §6015 Equitable Relief For §6672 Penalties
3. Reuters, Amy Wax Raises Over $125,000 To Defend Against ‘Major Sanction’ By Penn; Academic Freedom Alliance Calls For 'Complete Exoneration'
4. ABA Journal, ExamSoft: New Windows Laptops Won't Work On This Week's Bar Exams
5. Bloomberg, IRS: No Political Influence In Comey|McCabe Audits
6. ABA, Survey: Law Students Prefer Online Classes Over In-Person Classes
7. UC-Hastings, Committee Unveils Proposal For New Name: 'College Of The Law, San Francisco'
8. Wall Street Journal, The Fine Print Cost A Widow A $464,000 Charitable Tax Deduction
9. NALP, Law School Class Of 2021 Placement Outcomes: 'One Of The Strongest On Record'
10. Bloomberg, Do You Need A Tax LL.M. To Land A Great Job Right Now?

Katherine Magbanua Sentenced To Life In Prison, Plus Two 30-Year Sentences, In Dan Markel's Murder; Charlie Adelson Trial In Early 2023

Tallahassee Democrat, Magbanua Sentenced to Life, Plus Two 30-Year Sentences in Dan Markel Murder; Adelson Trial Possible For Early 2023:

Circuit Judge Robert Wheeler sentenced Katherine Magbanua to life in prison plus two additional 30-year sentences to run consecutively for her role in the murder of Florida State law professor Dan Markel. ...

Last week marked eight years since Markel was gunned down in his Betton Hills garage. 

Tara Kawass, Magabanua's attorney:  "One thing that I can say that Ms. Magbanua hopes and prays for is that justice is ongoing and has not been reached in this case and she wants each and every person who had a hand in this and knows something about this to be brought to justice." ...

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ABA Tax Section|Tax Analysts Public Service Tax Fellowship Application Deadline Extended

ABA Tax Section has extended the application deadline to August 15 for the Tax Analysts Public Service Fellowship:

The ABA Tax Section and Tax Analysts (the publisher of Tax Notes) have partnered to launch a new public interest fellowship to start this September. Tax Analysts Public Service Fellows will be funded by Tax Analysts to work for two years practicing public interest tax law. The fellowship is geared toward either those with an LLM in tax or experienced attorneys including those seeking to move into the public interest sector. The inaugural fellow will work at La Posada Tax Clinic in Twin Falls, Idaho. You can learn more about Bob Wunderle, who runs La Posada, and his important work providing a range of tax services to vulnerable populations including farm workers throughout the state of Idaho in this podcast from Tax Notes. Applications are due August 15 – the application and more information are available here.

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Listen!: Amplifying The Experiences Of Black Law School Graduates In 2020

Sarah J. Schendel (Suffolk; Google Scholar), Listen!: Amplifying the Experiences of Black Law School Graduates in 2020, 100 Neb. L. Rev. 73 (2021):

Law students graduating in 2020 faced a number of unusual challenges. However, perhaps no students faced more emotional, psychological, logistical, and financial challenges than Black law school graduates in 2020. In addition to changes in the administration of the bar exam (including the use of technology that struggled to recognize Black faces) and delays in the administration of the exam that led to anxiety and increased financial instability, Black communities were concurrently being disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to increased care-taking responsibilities for many, concerns over the health of family members, and a lack of quiet and reliable space to study. Black law school graduates already struggling to juggle these challenges were also confronted with a rise in anti-Black police brutality, and the racist words and actions of politicians. As a result of this unprecedented series of stressors, many Black law gradates struggled to focus on studying for the bar, with some choosing to delay or abandon sitting for the bar altogether. Many expressed anger, disappointment, and betrayal at the profession they have worked so hard to enter. This Article summarizes the survey responses of over 120 Black law students who graduated in 2020 and were asked how the COVID pandemic and increased anti-Black violence impacted their health, education, and career aspirations. It seems likely that the impact of 2020 on the presence and wellbeing of Black lawyers in the legal profession will be felt for years to come. As professors, deans, lawyers, and policymakers reexamine the function of the bar exam and confront inequalities in legal education, we need to listen to these graduates’ experiences.

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