Hasen: Pricing Low-Income Resource Volatility

David Hasen (Florida; Google Scholar), Pricing Low-Income Resource Volatility: 

Income and expense volatility are endemic features of economic life, but they impose disproportionately large costs on low-resource households because of allocative failures. This paper discusses four significant implications of economic volatility for this cohort. First, to a great extent, the losses this volatility occasions are in principle insurable and in practice avoidable at low cost, meaning that most volatility costs currently incurred in this population represent efficiency losses. Second, it is possible to quantify the efficiency losses in real dollars; estimates developed here suggest they run to the hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the U.S. Third, although these losses arise among low-resource households, they persist for populations much higher on the income distribution, indicating that avoidable volatility costs affect substantially more households than has commonly been recognized. Fourth, in conceptual terms, remediating many low-resource volatility costs does not require redistribution.

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The Big Four Are Coming After Big Law: KPMG Moves Step Closer To Approval For U.S. Law Firm (‘KPMG Law’)

Wall Street Journal, KPMG Wants to Be the First Accounting Giant to Own a U.S. Law Firm. Here’s Why.:

KPMG is poised to break through a longtime barrier and become the first Big Four accounting firm to practice law in the U.S., leveraging a novel Arizona program that allows nonlawyers to own law firms.

State approval for KPMG’s law ambitions is expected as soon as this month, a move that could usher in a sea change in two industries. KPMG says its Arizona-licensed lawyers could perform legal work for clients around the country. That could give it a leg up on its accounting rivals and send a shot across the bow to law firms, which would face new competition for work.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Mythbusters: What Do We Really Know About Online Law Schools?
• ABA Journal, Stanford Law Prof Fires Meta As Client, Citing Platform’s ‘Descent Into Toxic Masculinity’
• Above the Law, Adjunct Law Professors May Have Limitations
• Above the Law, Historic U.S. News Law School Rankings Shakeup: Is Yale Law Out Of The Top Spot?
• Nick Allard (Dean, Jacksonville), Future Lawyers Are Key to Defending Justice
• BusinessDesk, Fear and Loathing: The Auckland University Business and Law School Merger
• Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell Law School Sees Decrease in Hispanic Enrollment, Increase in Black Enrollment After Affirmative Action Overturn
• Court TV, Could Donna Adelson’s Estranged Son Seal Her Fate in Dan Markel's Murder? 

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More Business Schools Shrink Their 2-Year MBA To 1-Year; Will More Law Schools Offer 2-Year JDs?

Inside Higher Ed, The Rise of the Accelerated M.B.A.:

When the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management announced in November that it’s launching a one-year master of business administration program next summer, it joined a growing number of business schools responding to prospective students’ worries about the return on investment of a traditional two-year M.B.A.

While the two-year M.B.A. has long been considered the gold standard of graduate business education, data suggests that may be changing.

Between 2019 and 2024, the number of one-year M.B.A. programs in the United States, Canada and Latin America accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) increased from 131 to 210.

Declining enrollments over the past several years have also pushed other big public universities—including Pennsylvania State University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the Universities of Iowa, Connecticut and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—to move away from offering traditional two-year M.B.A.s and toward a mix of online, hybrid, part-time and accelerated options.

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Will The Destruction Of Hunter Biden's Artwork In The L.A. Fires Generate A Casualty Loss Tax Windfall?

Jonathan Turley (George Washington; Google Scholar), For Sale: Could the Burning of “Millions” in Hunter's Art a Windfall?:

There is an interesting New York Post report that roughly 200 of Hunter Biden’s art pieces were destroyed in the Los Angeles wildfires. The value of the art stored near the home of Hunter’s patron and lawyer, Kevin Morris, is being claimed in the “millions of dollars.” The question is whether, with reports of a collapse in the value of Hunter’s art with the departure of his father from office, the fire might prove the ultimate windfall for Hunter and his “clients.” ...

The drop in the value of art reflects not only the volatile art market but also the fluctuating influence-peddling market. The Bidens are finally cashing out of Washington. ...

[T]he story raises an intriguing question of whether the art was insured and, if so, at what price. The collapse of the influence-peddling market was expected to collapse the value of Hunter’s art. However, this fire came just before Joe Biden left office and the drop in value was expected to occur.

If insured, the art could bring the full influence-peddled value and Biden art holders could be saved by an act of nature. ...

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TaxProf Blog Holiday Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Stanford Law Prof Fires Meta As Client, Citing Platform's ‘Descent Into Toxic Masculinity’
• NY Times: What Did The Trump Tax Cuts Do? Nobody Really Knows.

Sunday:

• 2025 Religious Law School Rankings
• NY Times Op-Ed: Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?
• God Redeems Even As Wildfires Spread
• How Pepperdine University Is Helping Fight The L.A. Fires
• Tax Prof Tim Todd Named Dean Of Liberty Law School
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

Martin Luther King Jr. Day:

• Brauner Presents Mobility, Territory And Exclusive Source Taxation Today In Austria
• No, Columbia Did Not Fire Katherine Franke
• 23% Of Harvard MBAs Are Struggling To Land Jobs
• Tax Lawyer And Tax Professor Discuss The Difficulty Of Leaving Donald Trump's America (And Ron DeSantis's Florida)

Brauner Presents Mobility, Territory And Exclusive Source Taxation Today In Austria

Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar) presents You Play, You Pay! Mobility, Territory and Exclusive Source Taxation in the 21st Century at the Institute of Austrian and International Tax Law today as part of its Colloquium on Current Developments in European and International Tax Law: 

The demise of residence as an appropriate basis for taxation in the 21st century requires a rethinking of the international tax regime. This article continues the exploration of (both individual and corporate tax) reform based on exclusive source taxation. Demonstrating that such reform is possible and desirable for the survival of the international tax regime is the primary contribution of this article. The other main contributions are an explanation of the benefits of a single rather than dual basis for income taxation, and a detailed analysis of the existing source rules and their potential reforms. The latter have come under criticism as ineffective and incompatible for the realities of the 21st century. The article explains that the critique of the content of the existing source rules should not automatically count against the principle of source taxation.

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No, Columbia Did Not Fire Katherine Franke

Following up on Tuesday's post, New York Times: Tenured Columbia Law Professor Says She Was Pushed To Retire Because Of Her Pro-Palestine Activism:  Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  No, Katherine Franke Was Not Fired, by Steven Lubet (Northwestern):

Katherine Franke announced earlier this month that she had been forced out of her tenured position at Columbia University’s law school because of her pro-Palestine activism. The Center for Constitutional Rights, where Franke once served as board chair, called it an “egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian-rights advocacy.” The president of the American Association of University Professors said Columbia’s actions were “truly shameful,” declaring that the organization “stands with “Professor Franke and against this repression of pro-Palestinian speech.”

These and other expressions of solidarity, however, all appear to have been based solely on Franke’s side of the story, which she posted in a two-page statement on January 10. Franke detailed what she called her “termination,” following an “unjustified finding” that her “public comments condemning attacks against student protesters violated university nondiscrimination policy.”

Franke’s statement is, at best, misleading. It contains substantial omissions. She was not terminated by Columbia, although she was found responsible for harassing Israeli students on the basis of national origin. ...

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WSJ: 23% Of Harvard MBAs Are Struggling To Land Jobs

Wall Street Journal, Even Harvard M.B.A.s Are Struggling to Land Jobs:

Landing a professional job in the U.S. has become so tough that even Harvard Business School says its M.B.A.s can’t solely rely on the university’s name to open doors anymore.

Twenty-three percent of job-seeking Harvard M.B.A.s who graduated last spring were still looking for work three months after leaving campus. That share is up from 20% the prior year, during a cooling white-collar labor market; the figure was 10% in 2022, according to the school. ...

Harvard isn’t the only elite business school where recent grads seem to be stumbling on their way into the job market. More than a dozen top-tier M.B.A. programs, including those at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and New York University’s Stern School of Business, had worse job-placement outcomes last year than any other in recent memory.

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Tax Lawyer And Tax Professor Discuss The Difficulty Of Leaving Donald Trump's America (And Ron DeSantis's Florida)

Steven Chung (Tax Attorney, Los Angeles), You May Be Upset With The Election Result, But Leaving The Country Is A Complicated Process That Might Not Be Worth It:

Now that Donald Trump has been elected for his second and final term as president, some people are thinking about leaving the country during his imperial reign. Most people who are simply unhappy with the election results will probably change their minds after a day or two. ...

While many people are upset with the election results and want to leave the country out of frustration or fear, it is only feasible for a small number to do so. 

Neil Buchanan (Visiting Professor, Toronto), The Daunting Realities of Trying to Leave the Country:

After Tuesday’s election results, many stunned Americans started to talk about leaving the United States, hoping to find a new home that is not on the fast track toward becoming a one-party dictatorship. Some people have asked me about this possibility, because I did that very thing more than a year ago. I am certainly glad that I did, and I understand perhaps better than anyone the feelings that many people are having right now. The realities of expatriating, however, are not what people might hope.

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2025 Religious Law School Rankings

Most Devout Law Schools, preLaw (Winter 2025):

Acts of Service: We recognize 20 law schools that are living their missions through benevolent works. ...

Every two years, preLaw magazine spotlights the country’s most devout law schools. Schools are ranked all together, rather than being categorized by denomination. ... The schools are ranked by how much emphasis they place on religion in their curriculum, faculty and daily campus life.

While 46 of the nation’s 197 law schools have ties to various religious organizations, there are big differences among them when it comes to acting on their faith.

Methodology:

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NY Times Op-Ed: Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?

New York Times Op-Ed:  Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?, by David French (Author, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020)):

Here’s a question I hear everywhere I go, including from fellow Christians: Why are so many Christians so cruel?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say something like: I’ve experienced blowback in the secular world, but nothing prepared me for church hate. Christian believers can be especially angry and even sometimes vicious.

It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, but that answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.

Most of us have sound enough moral instincts to reject the notion that might makes right. Power alone is not a sufficient marker of righteousness. We may watch people bow to power out of fear or awe, but yielding to power isn’t the same thing as acknowledging that it is legitimate or that it is just.

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God Redeems Even As Wildfires Spread

Christianity Today Op-Ed:  God Redeems Even as Wildfires Spread, by Kutter Callaway (Fuller Theological Seminary):

A few days ago, the world around me exploded into flames. Sparked by an unprecedented wind event with 100-mile-per-hour gusts, six wildfires engulfed huge swaths of the greater Los Angeles region. I live just south of where the Eaton fire erupted, which has damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 buildings and left at least 16 people dead. ... 

For the past 14 years, I have taught at Fuller Theological Seminary, located in Pasadena near the epicenter of the catastrophe. Although my family’s home remains intact with only minor damage, the same cannot be said for so many others connected to Fuller or in my broader community. I know of at least eight faculty, staff, and students at Fuller whose homes went up in flames. ... (Isa. 43:1–2, NET) ...

Many of these same dynamics were in play for the people of Israel during the time God spoke through the prophet as recorded in Isaiah 43. The Exile was a catastrophic disruption. Some were forcibly removed from the land, and some were privileged enough to remain. Any sense of togetherness or commonality or unity that might have grown from this shared experience was threatened by their separate traumas. It is into this conflicted space and to this traumatized people that God speaks:

Now, this is what the Lord says,
the one who created you, O Jacob,
and formed you, O Israel:
“Don’t be afraid, for I will protect you.
I call you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I am with you;
when you pass through the streams, they will not overwhelm you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
the flames will not harm you. (Isa. 43:1–2, NET)

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How Pepperdine University Is Helping Fight The L.A. Fires

Christianity Today, How Pepperdine University Is Helping Fight the LA Fires:

Even as wildfires burn neighborhoods nearby, destroying the homes of some faculty and students, Pepperdine University is starting its spring semester by helping local firefighters in Los Angeles.

With firefighters in the area facing water shortages, the Christian university in Malibu has provided essential help by giving them access to the university’s two water reservoirs, which hold the school’s recycled and treated water. Helicopters suck up the water and can transfer it to firefighters on the ground or make water drops over the fires.

California governor Gavin Newsom shared a video of an LA County Fire Department helicopter pulling water from one of Pepperdine’s lakes, saying, “Multiple water refills in just a matter of minutes.”

First responders are rapidly responding to the #KennethFire — transporting water from Pepperdine University's Recycled Water Irrigation Reservoir via helicopter to firefighters on the ground in Calabasas.

Multiple water refills in just a matter of minutes. pic.twitter.com/9LqPXSXbVZ

— Governor Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 10, 2025

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Tax Prof Tim Todd Named Dean Of Liberty Law School

Following up on my previous post, Morse Tan Steps Down As Liberty Law School Dean After 2 1/2 Years; Tax Prof Tim Todd Named Interim Dean:  Liberty Announces Deans for Schools of Aeronautics, Law, and Business:

Dr. Timothy Todd has been named dean of the School of Law. ...

Dr. Timothy Todd holds a Ph.D. in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University, M.S. in Applied Economics (Financial Economics concentration) from Johns Hopkins University, Juris Doctor from Liberty University School of Law (where he graduated first in his class), and an M.S. in Accounting and B.S. in Business from Liberty. He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), licensed in Virginia, and holds a Graduate Certificate in Applied Statistics from Kansas State University.

Todd has published extensively, contributing to both academic and professional journals. His areas of teaching and interest include taxation, financial planning, wills, trusts, estates, estate planning and business planning.

He was the first Liberty Law graduate and alumnus to join the law school faculty full time. Todd served as associate dean for academic affairs from 2016-20 and was the first associate dean of faculty development and scholarship at Liberty Law (2020-24).

His recent publications include:

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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 #4:

1. [468 Downloads]  Rotten to the Core: The EU's Court of Justice Decision in Apple, by Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar) & Stephen Daly (King's College London; Google Scholar)
2. [342 Downloads]  The Quiet Evolution In International Tax: Domestic Law And Double Taxation, by Craig Elliffe (University of Auckland; Google Scholar)
3. [272 Downloads]  The Consequences Of Limiting The Tax Deductibility Of R&D, by Mary Cowx (Arizona State; Google Scholar), Rebecca Lester (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Michelle L. Nessa (Michigan State; Google Scholar)
4. [229 Downloads]  A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation, by Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
5. [227 Downloads]  The Spiderweb Of Partnership Tax Structures, by Ryan Hess (Georgia), Emily Black (NYU), Zaynah Javed (Stanford; Google Scholar), Jonathan Hennessy (Stanford; Google Scholar), Rebecca Lester (Stanford; Google Scholar), Jacob Goldin (Chicago; Google Scholar), Daniel E. Ho (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Annette Portz (IRS)

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. New York Times, Tenured Columbia Law Professor Says She Was Pushed To Retire Because Of Her Pro-Palestine Activism
2. Peter Savodnik (The Free Press), Yale Law School's ‘Tiger Mom’ Roars Back
3. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Legal Ed News Roundup
4. ABA Journal, What Do We Really Know About The 19 Online Law Schools?
5. Michael Smith (St. Mary's), Generative AI And The Purpose Of Legal Scholarship
6. Robert Kuehn (Washington University), The Employment Benefits Of Law Clinics And Externships
7. Meredith Geller (Northwestern), Help Me, Help You: What You Should Know Before You Ask Your LRW Professor For Help
8. Wall Street Journal, Law Prof Amy Wax Sues Penn Over Suspension, Citing ‘Racially Discriminatory’ Speech Policy
9. The Recorder, Some Los Angeles Law Schools Begin Spring Semester Remotely Due To Fires
10. LSAC, CUNY Dean Sudha Setty Named LSAC President & CEO

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

Tax:

1. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2025 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index All
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2025 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index Since 2020
3. Laura Snyder, Karen Alpert & John Richardson, Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans
4. Kristin Hickman (Minnesota), Presentation Of Study Evaluating OIRA Review Of Treasury Regulations At San Diego
5. Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama), Review Of The Intellectual Origins Of The Modern International Tax Regime By Ajay Mehrotra (Northwestern)
6. AALS Tax Section, Program on Teaching Tax — Textbooks, Tools, And Techniques
7. AALS Tax Section, Program on The Expiration Of The TCJA And The Future Of Tax Policy
8. Tsilly Dagan (Oxford), Substantive Tax Sovereignty Under Globalization
9. AALS, Ellen Aprill And Beverly Moran Receive AALS Tax Section Lifetime Achievement Awards
10. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers

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

Faith

1. Pepperdine Surf Report, Supreme Court Grants Cert Petition Authored By Pepperdine Religious Liberty Clinic Director And Alum
2. New York Times Interview, Jonathan Roumie Plays Jesus To Millions. It Can Get Intense.
3. Peter Savodnik (The Free Press), How Intellectuals Found God
4. New York Times Op-Ed (David French), What If Our Democracy Can’t Survive Without Christianity?
5. NY Times, At The Intersection of A.I. And Spirituality

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

Stanford Law Prof Fires Meta As Client, Citing Platform's ‘Descent Into Toxic Masculinity’

ABA Journal, Stanford Law Prof Fires Meta as Client, Citing Platform's 'Descent into Toxic Masculinity':

A professor at Stanford Law School announced on LinkedIn on Monday that he could no longer “in good conscience” represent Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

Mark Lemley, the William H. Neukom professor of law at Stanford Law and director of its Program in Law, Science and Technology, said in his social media post he has “struggled with how to respond to [CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness.”

Lemley, a partner at Lex Lumina who was representing Meta in a copyright dispute in the Northern District of California, said he fired the company as a client. The case, Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, involves allegations that Meta trained its artificial intelligence product using the copyrighted works of several authors.

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NY Times: What Did The Trump Tax Cuts Do? Nobody Really Knows.

New York Times, What Did the Trump Tax Cuts Do? Nobody Really Knows.:

Seven years ago, when Republicans passed the most significant overhaul of the tax code in a generation, they were sure the law would supercharge investment, raise wages and shift the American economy into a higher gear.

So did it?

The answer, at least for now, is largely lost to history.

A pandemic and a surge in inflation convulsed the global economy not long after the law passed in 2017, scrambling the data that analysts would have typically relied on to draw conclusions about whether the tax cuts helped the economy grow the way Republicans had promised.

As a result, policymakers in Washington are now relying on only a partial understanding of the law’s past as they weigh committing roughly $5 trillion toward continuing it.

“Basically, from 2020 the data is kind of useless,” said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who counts Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, among his former students.

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Structural Tax Reform And The Next REIT Revolution

Sloan G. Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar), Structural Tax Reform and the Next REIT Revolution, 27 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. __ (2025):

Although often treated as monolithic, contemporary tax reform typically bundles disparate provisions into a single legislative act, or tax package. This tax package may support a discrete set of congressional objectives, but the vagaries of the tax legislative process make disjunctures likely. Multiple provisions, taken together, may advance ends unforeseen—and perhaps unforeseeable—by legislators. Within a tax package, these disjunctures often emerge post-enactment, during implementation by both the Treasury Department and private actors. This Article denotes these emergent disjunctures as “structural noncoordination.”

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, Mythbusters: What Do We Really Know About Online Law Schools?
• ABA Journal, New York Will Adopt NextGen Bar Exam, Considers Surprising Shifts in State-Law Tests
• Meredith Geller (Northwestern), Help Me, Help You: What You Should Know Before You Ask for Help
• Joan Howarth (Nevada), Claudia Angelos (NYU), Mary Lu Bilek & Deborah Jones Merritt (OSU), Langdell's Subjects
• New York Times, Columbia Professor Says She Was Pushed to Retire Because of Her Activism
• Pepperdine Surf Report, Cert Petition Authored by Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Religious Liberty Clinic Director Eric Rassbach and Pepperdine Caruso Law Alumnus Colten Stanberry (JD '19) Granted by Supreme Court
• The Recorder, Some Los Angeles Law Schools Begin Spring Semester Remotely

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WSJ: Law Prof Amy Wax Sues Penn Over Suspension, Citing ‘Racially Discriminatory’ Speech Policy

Wall Street Journal, Professor Amy Wax Sues Penn Over Suspension, Citing ‘Racially Discriminatory’ Policy:

University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Wax has sued the Ivy League school over her suspension, arguing that the school violated her First Amendment rights and has a racially discriminatory speech policy.

The university suspended Wax in September, saying the tenured law-school professor had “a history of making sweeping, blithe, and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status.”

Her suspension, for a year on half-pay, is set to begin in the next academic year. The measure also included the loss of her named chair and the loss of summer pay in perpetuity.

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, IRS Direct File to Stay This Tax Filing Season, Bessent Says
• Bloomberg, OECD Negotiators Vow to Resolve Issues in Global Tax Pact
• Bloomberg, Supreme Court's Newest Tax Case Offers Window to Challenge IRS
• Bloomberg, Trump Floats Creating ‘External Revenue Service’ for Tariffs
• Cato Institute, Cato Tax Bootcamp: Tax Code 101 
• Chronicle of Higher Education, How Trump Could Devastate Our Top Colleges’ Finances: A 35-Percent Endowment Tax Would Hurt Students — And Society

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Galle, Gamage & Kuchumova: Tax Base Diversification As An Enforcement Tool

Brian D. Galle (Georgetown; Google Scholar), David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia; Google Scholar) & Yulia (Paramonova) Kuchumova (National Research University; Google Scholar), Tax Base Diversification as an Enforcement Tool, 26 Am. L. & Econ. Rev. __ (2025):

We examine when it is optimal to employ sales or VAT-type taxes as complements to a labor income tax. We find a Ramsey-type result in which each tax instrument should be imposed in inverse proportion to the combined elasticity of real and avoidance responses to the respective tax. Contrary to some prior results, we find that sales-type taxes are optimally non-zero across a variety of settings, and in particular when the (weighted) elasticity of taxable income with respect to the wage tax is greater than the cross-elasticity of taxable income with respect to the sales tax. 

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What Do We Really Know About The 19 Online Law Schools?

ABA Journal, Mythbusters: What Do We Really Know About Online Law Schools?:

The journeys of individual students enrolling in online law school are as varied as the programs themselves, the ABA Journal finds.

Currently, only law schools with brick-and-mortar campuses can gain ABA accreditation for their online JD programs. To date, 19 have received that blessing, and others are carefully considering joining the ranks. ...

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Help Me, Help You: What You Should Know Before You Ask Your LRW Professor For Help

Meredith Geller (Northwestern), Help Me, Help You: What You Should Know Before You Ask for Help: 

I got an email the other day from a student who was having some difficulty writing his arguments. The student wrote that he kept rewriting his arguments in response to my comments but that he still had not been able to get them written satisfactorily. I could tell the student was frustrated and I could also tell that, for the moment, at least, I was the target of that frustration. Essentially, the student was telling me that he had changed things in accordance with my comments, but I still was not happy. Having been teaching for fifteen years, the frustration alone neither surprised nor upset me. However, I certainly know that there are times when it would and that there are colleagues who can and do get irritated by emails like this. So, I created a guide to help provide my students with tips on what they need to know about asking me for help. 

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Soled: The Estate Tax And Its Tacit Push To Be Charitable

Jay Soled (Rutgers; Google Scholar), The Estate Tax and Its Tacit Push to Be Charitable, 185 Tax Notes Fed. 2375 (Dec. 23, 2024):

In this article, Soled argues that Congress should maintain the estate tax because it nudges taxpayers to be more charitable than they likely would be without it.

Societies have levied estate taxes on accumulated wealth throughout ancient and modern history. In most industrialized countries, some people amass sufficient affluence for estate tax exposure, and those who fall within the scope of this prosperity often take extraordinary measures to defeat those taxes.

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2025 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index Since 2020

Yesterday, I posted Google Scholar H-Index All rankings of the Top 128 tax professors with Google Scholar pages (data collected on January 6). The Google Scholar H-Index Since 2020 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 2020)
1	Joel Slemrod	Michigan	54
2	Alan Auerbach	UC-Berkeley	41
3	James Hines	Michigan	33
4	Reuven Avi-Yonah	Michigan	27
5	Dhammika Dharmapala	UC-Berkeley	24
6	Jacob Goldin	Chicago	23
7	Kimberly Clausing	UCLA	22
8	Daniel Hemel	NYU	21
8	David Weisbach	Chicago	21
10	Kristin Hickman	Minnesota	20
11	Edward McCaffery	USC	18
12	Leandra Lederman	Indiana (Maurer)	17
12	Dan Shaviro	NYU	17
12	Eric Zolt	UCLA	17
15	Brian Galle	Georgetown	16
15	Robert Sitkoff	Harvard	16
17	Yariv Brauner	Florida	15
17	Zachary Liscow	Yale	15
17	Kyle Logue	Michigan	15
20	Jonathan Choi	USC	14
20	Bridget Crawford	Pace	14
20	Andrew Hayashi	Virginia	14
20	Kyle Rozema	Northwestern	14
24	Nancy Knauer	Temple	13
24	Ruth Mason	Virginia	13
24	Diane Ring	Boston College	13
27	Joshua Blank	UC-Irvine	12
27	Steven Dean	Boston Univ.	12
27	David Gamage	Missouri (Columbia)	12
27	Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer	Notre Dame	12
27	Lawrence Zelenak	Duke	12
32	Hugh Ault	Boston College	11
32	Dorothy Brown	Georgetown	11
32	Clifton Fleming	BYU	11
32	Rebecca Kysar	Fordham	11
32	Sarah Lawsky	Northwestern	11
32	Omri Marian	UC-Irvine	11
32	Ajay Mehrotra	Northwestern	11
32	Amy Monahan	Minnesota	11
32	Susan Morse	Texas	11
32	Shu-Yi Oei	Duke	11
32	Leigh Osofsky	North Carolina	11
32	Chris Sanchirico	Penn	11
32	Darien Shanske	UC-Davis	11
32	Michael Simkovic	USC	11
32	David Walker	Boston Univ.	11
47	Steven Bank	UCLA	10
47	Kathleen Delaney Thomas	North Carolina	10
47	Ari Glogower	Northwestern	10
47	James Repetti	Boston College	10
47	Stephen Shay	Boston College	10
52	Ellen Aprill	Loyola-L.A.	9
52	Leslie Book	Villanova	9
52	John Brooks	Fordham	9
52	Samuel Brunson	Loyola-Chicago	9
52	Lilian Faulhaber	Georgetown	9
52	Miranda Perry Fleischer	San Diego	9
52	Christine Hurt	SMU	9
52	Nancy McLaughlin	Utah	9
52	Jay Soled	Rutgers	9

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Yale Law School's ‘Tiger Mom’ Roars Back

Following up on my previous post:  Vanity Fair: What JD And Usha Vance Learned From Their ‘Tiger Mom’ At Yale Law School:  Peter Savodnik (The Free Press), The Tiger Mother Roars Back:

In January 2011, Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua was in the middle of her book tour, in her hotel room in Seattle, when an email came in from the future vice president of the United States.

Her book—Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother—had just come out, and she was getting pummeled in the media for demanding that her daughters get straight A’s and play the piano or violin. She was called the “worst mother ever.” There were death threats.

“I’m not a crier, but I was so depressed,” Chua told me. “I was there by myself—I had bodyguards—and I get an email from J.D. Vance.”

The first-year law student had a question about his upcoming exam in Chua’s Contracts class. She had been mentoring Vance and quickly replied.

“Three hours later, probably after a beer, he writes me another email, and he’s like, ‘You know what? I should be studying, but I’m so curious about all this furor, so I went to Barnes & Noble, and I read it,’ ” she said, referring to her book. “He’s like, ‘I do not know why this is controversial.’ ”

Then, he told her, “You remind me of Mamaw”—Vance’s grandmother, who raised him with the same tough love that courses through Tiger Mother.

Vance added that he “felt a little bit bad” for giving her the impression that he came from an intact family, saying things were “more complicated” back home. He attached a document to the email, “and it’s the opening of Hillbilly Elegy,” Chua said, “and even though I was in trauma about my own situation, I read this thing, and I said, ‘J.D., you have to write your own book.’ ”

Which, of course, he did.

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Generative AI And The Purpose Of Legal Scholarship

Following up on my previous post, Andrew Perlman (Dean, Suffolk), Generative AI and the Future of Legal Scholarship: Michael L. Smith (St. Mary's), Generative AI and the Purpose of Legal Scholarship: 

What does generative AI mean for the future of legal scholarship? The topic has been the talk of the town around academic water coolers. Some legal scholars have tried their hand at generating legal scholarship using generative AI. The accompanying commentary is varied, but advocates for the technology suggest that generative may become a common tool for legal scholars, leaving those who refuse to adapt at a severe disadvantage.

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Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans

Laura Snyder, Karen Alpert & John Richardson, Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans, 185 Tax Notes Fed. 793 (Oct. 28, 2024):

We appreciate this opportunity to respond to “Trump Vows to End ‘Double Taxation’ of Overseas Citizens” by Alexander Rifaat. 

While we have multiple concerns with the opinions expressed by professor Reuven Avi-Yonah in the article, we would like to focus on his comment about the tax treaties the United States has concluded with other countries. According to professor Avi-Yonah, the “tiebreaker” clause contained in these treaties serves to protect overseas Americans from double taxation.

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2025 Tax Prof Rankings: Google Scholar H-Index All

Below are the updated Google Scholar H-Index All rankings of the Top 119 U.S. tax professors with Google Scholar pages (data collected on January 6). 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	100
2	Alan Auerbach	UC-Berkeley	98
3	James Hines	Michigan	67
4	Reuven Avi-Yonah	Michigan	40
5	David Weisbach	Chicago	38
6	Dan Shaviro	NYU	35
7	Dhammika Dharmapala	UC-Berkeley	34
8	Kimberly Clausing	UCLA	31
8	Edward McCaffery	USC	31
10	Brian Galle	Georgetown	28
10	Lawrence Zelenak	Duke	28
10	Eric Zolt	UCLA	28
13	Kristin Hickman	Minnesota	27
13	Kyle Logue	Michigan	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	24
20	Leandra Lederman	Indiana (Maurer)	24
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	Ellen Aprill	Loyola-L.A.	19
27	Yariv Brauner	Florida	19
27	Bridget Crawford	Pace	19
27	Ruth Mason	Virginia	19
31	Clifton Fleming	BYU	18
31	David Gamage	Missouri (Columbia)	18
31	Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer	Notre Dame	18
34	Karen Burke	Florida	17
34	Paul Caron	Pepperdine	17
34	Anthony Infanti	Pittsburgh	17
34	Amy Monahan	Minnesota	17
34	Richard Pomp	Connecticut	17
34	James Repetti	Boston College	17
34	Kyle Rozema	Northwestern	17
34	Darien Shanske	UC-Davis	17
34	Jay Soled	Rutgers	17
43	Hugh Ault	Boston College	16
43	John Coverdale	Seton Hall	16
43	Victor Fleischer	UC-Irvine	16
43	Sarah Lawsky	Northwestern	16
43	Zachary Liscow	Yale	16
43	Ajay Mehrotra	Northwestern	16
43	Shu-Yi Oei	Duke	16
43	Gregg Polsky	Georgia	16
51	Joshua Blank	UC-Irvine	15
51	Bradley Borden	Brooklyn	15
51	Steven Dean	Boston Univ.	15
51	Andrew Hayashi	Virginia	15
51	Omri Marian	UC-Irvine	15
51	Stephen Shay	Boston College	15
51	Linda Sugin	Fordham	15

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NY Times: Tenured Columbia Law Professor Says She Was Pushed To Retire Because Of Her Pro-Palestine Activism

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  New York Times, Columbia Professor Says She Was Pushed to Retire Because of Her Activism:

Columbia University and one of its longtime law professors, Katherine Franke, have severed ties after an investigation stemming from her advocacy on behalf of pro-Palestinian students.

It was the latest fallout from student and faculty activism related to the Gaza War on a major university campus.

Ms. Franke, a tenured professor known primarily for her work as founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, had been an advocate for pro-Palestinian students as protests erupted on the campus last school year.

She was also one of several faculty members investigated by the university over allegations of antisemitism, after the school received complaints about comments she made about Israelis on a radio program.

Statement From Katherine Franke (Jan. 10, 2025):

[T]he University has allowed its own disciplinary process to be weaponized against members of our community, including myself. I have been targeted for my support of pro-Palestinian protesters — by the president of Columbia University, by several colleagues, by university trustees, and by outside actors. This has included an unjustified finding by the University that my public comments condemning attacks against student protesters violated university non-discrimination policy.

I have come to the view that the Columbia University administration has created such a toxic and hostile environment for legitimate debate around the war in Israel and Palestine that I can no longer teach or conduct research.

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Some Los Angeles Law Schools Begin Spring Semester Remotely Due To Fires

The Recorder, Some Los Angeles Law Schools Begin Spring Semester Remotely:

Some Los Angeles law schools are starting their first week of the spring semester remotely as nearby wildfires continue to burn.

University of California, Los Angeles, located just outside the southeastern perimeter of the Palisades fire in Westwood, announced Saturday that all undergraduate and graduate classes would be held remotely through Friday. ...

Pepperdine University, located on the west side of the Palisades fire’s edge in Malibu, also announced Friday that the university would move classes online through Sunday. 

“We are mindful and deeply impacted by the devastation wreaked by the recent fires in the Los Angeles area as we prepare to support our community in the days ahead,” Jim Gash, the school's president and CEO, said in a message to the university community. “We have prayed, and continue to pray, for God’s protection and provision for the University community and communities throughout Los Angeles County.”

Caruso School of Law dean Paul Caron confirmed the Pepperdine campus had not been affected by the fire.

Inside Higher Ed, Some L.A. Colleges to Reopen This Week, Others Stay Closed Amid Wildfires:

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Dagan: Substantive Tax Sovereignty Under Globalization

Tsilly Dagan (Oxford; Google Scholar), Substantive Tax Sovereignty Under Globalization, 29 Tilburg L. Rev. 1 (2024):

Tax sovereignty stands for the ability of a political community to design its fiscal system in ways that support its collective self-determination. This article argues that substantive sovereignty is not merely about power, rather, it is about legitimate authority. It addresses the impact of globalisation on such sovereignty, considering the impact it has on the ability of the state to provide public goods, to promote distributive justice, and to respect political participation and membership in a political community.

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Hickman Presents A Study Evaluating OIRA Review Of Treasury Regulations Today At San Diego

Kristin Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar) presents A Study Evaluating OIRA Review of Treasury Regulations (with Bridget C.E. Dooling (Ohio State; Google Scholar)) at San Diego today as part of its Tax Law Speaker Series hosted by Michelle Layser:

The second term of the Trump Administration portends significant changes to federal policy, many of which have received large amounts of heated attention both in public and in private. A lesser-known change is the anticipated reinstatement of centralized review of tax regulations by the Office of Information of Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). For many years, most tax regulations were exempt from OIRA review. That changed in the first Trump administration when the Treasury Department (Treasury) and OIRA signed a memorandum of agreement bringing more tax regulations within OIRA’s oversight sphere. In the Biden administration, Treasury and OIRA reversed course, this time clearly and unequivocally exempting all tax regulations without exception. It was a rare retreat from the expansive approach to presidential authority that dominates the modern era.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Latest Try At Rewriting ABA Diversity Standard For Law Schools Gets Pushback From GOP Attorneys General
• ABA Journal, Law Grads With Past Substance-Use Disorders Suffered Disability Bias In Quest For License, DOJ Says
• ABA Journal, Law School Admission Council Names Its Next President And CEO
• ABA Journal, New York Will Adopt Nextgen Bar Exam, Considers Surprising Shifts In State-Law Tests
• ABA Journal Op-Ed (Nicholas Allard (Dean, Jacksonville)), Remembering President James Earl 'Jimmy' Carter, Ever the Teacher
• Michael Dorf (Cornell), The Lasting Legacy of Henry Monaghan
• Harvard Law Today, Harvard Law Faculty Remember Jimmy Carter

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New York Is 30th Jurisdiction To Adopt NextGen Bar Exam

ABA Journal, New York Will Adopt NextGen Bar Exam, Considers Surprising Shifts in State-Law Tests:

New York, the jurisdiction with the largest number of bar candidates, will adopt the NextGen bar exam as it considers rejiggering the state-specific part of the exam, too, according to the New York Court of Appeals.

The state, where 14,354 examinees took the bar exam in 2024, becomes the 30th jurisdiction to adopt the test, according to a Jan. 8 press release from the National Conference of Bar Examiners. ...

[T]he notice posted Jan. 8 from the New York Court of Appeals states that a committee will develop “options for a robust New York-Specific bar eligibility requirement, … including the possibility of an in-person New York law component.”

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Ellen Aprill And Beverly Moran Receive AALS Tax Section Lifetime Achievement Awards

Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar) and Beverly Moran (Vanderbilt) received the AALS Tax Section Lifetime Achievement Award at the year's AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco: 

Ellen Aprill

Ellen Aprill is a teacher, a scholar, a mentor, and a mensch. As noted in our call for nominations, the purpose of the Section of Taxation’s Lifetime Achievement Award is to honor an individual who has had a distinguished career of teaching, service, and scholarship. The recipient should be someone who has impacted the field of taxation, the legal community, the academy through mentoring, writing, speaking, activism, and by providing opportunities to others.

Ellen recently retired from over 30 years of teaching at Loyola Los Angeles School of Law. (Teaching, check!)

She also was the founding director of Loyola's Tax LLM program. She has written over 50 articles focusing on tax-exempt organizations and many related issues, such as legislative process and election law. (Writing, check!)

Ellen has made countless presentations, including a memorable one in 2018 for the Tax Policy and Simplification Committee, in which she defined Bryd droppings, complete with a tasteful graphic (Speaking, check!)

She co-chaired the ABA Tax Force on Patenting Tax Strategies and is a favorite of journalists who seek information on exempt orgs, one of whom penned an ode for Ellen's festschrift. (Activism, check!)

Ellen has also mentored countless grateful tax scholars, including me. (Thank you!) And she's not finished yet, not by a long shot.  Ellen is currently serving as Senior Scholar in Residence at UCLA School of Law. ...

Ellen, thank you for all you do and for all you have done.  Mazel tov!

Beverly Moran: 

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• AALS Tax Section Program Today: Teaching Tax — Textbooks, Tools, And Techniques
• Next Week’s Tax Workshop

Sunday:

• NY Times: At The Intersection of A.I. And Spirituality
• How Intellectuals Found God
• NY Times Op-Ed: What If Our Democracy Can’t Survive Without Christianity?
• Supreme Court Grants Cert Petition Authored By Pepperdine Religious Liberty Clinic Director And Alum
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

NY Times: At The Intersection of A.I. And Spirituality

New York Times, At the Intersection of A.I. and Spirituality:

For centuries, new technologies have changed the ways people worship, from the radio in the 1920s to television sets in the 1950s and the internet in the 1990s. Some proponents of A.I. in religious spaces have gone back even further, comparing A.I.’s potential — and fears of it — to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.

Religious leaders have used A.I. to translate their livestreamed sermons into different languages in real time, blasting them out to international audiences. Others have compared chatbots trained on tens of thousands of pages of Scripture to a fleet of newly trained seminary students, able to pull excerpts about certain topics nearly instantaneously.

But the ethical questions around using generative A.I. for religious tasks have become more complicated as the technology has improved, religious leaders say. While most agree that using A.I. for tasks like research or marketing is acceptable, other uses for the technology, like sermon writing, are seen by some as a step too far.

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How Intellectuals Found God

Peter Savodnik (The Free Press), How Intellectuals Found God:

[S]omething profound is happening. Instead of smirking at religion, some of our most important philosophers, novelists, and public intellectuals are now reassessing their contempt for it. They are wondering if they might have missed something. Religion, the historian Niall Ferguson told me, “provides ethical immunity to the false religions of Lenin and Hitler.”

There is something inevitable about this reassessment, Jonathan Haidt, the prominent New York University psychologist and best-selling author, told me. (Haidt’s books include The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.) “There is a God-shaped hole in every human heart, and I believe it was put there by evolution,” he said. He was alluding to the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who wrote extensively on the nature of faith.

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NY Times Op-Ed: What If Our Democracy Can’t Survive Without Christianity?

New York Times Op-Ed:  What if Our Democracy Can’t Survive Without Christianity?, by David French (Author, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020)):

The New York Times Opinion columnist David French, a lifelong evangelical, speaks to Jonathan Rauch (Author, Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy (2025)), a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an atheist, about the role of Christianity in redeeming and supporting American democracy.

David French: ... You’re an atheist. You don’t believe in God, but one of the points to your book is for American democracy to flourish, you argue that we need better Christianity. You’re not trying to say that the solution to the crisis in American democracy or problems in American democracy is becoming an atheist. You talk about a solution that is actually about a better version of Christianity, or Christianity living up to its ideals.

I found that fascinating. Why is it that you took this approach that said a better Christianity is the answer, not no Christianity?

Rauch: Well, I wouldn’t even say “better.” The way I think of it is: What really needs to happen to get our country on a better track is for Christianity not to become more secular or more liberal, but to become more like itself, to become more truly Christian.

I came to that for a few reasons, but one of them is knowing people like you and other Christians who showed me that the three fundamentals of Christianity map very well onto the three fundamentals of Madisonian liberalism. And one of those is don’t be afraid. No. 2 is be like Jesus. Imitate Jesus. And No. 3 is forgive each other. And those things are very much like how you run a constitutional republic.

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Supreme Court Grants Cert Petition Authored By Pepperdine Religious Liberty Clinic Director And Alum

Pepperdine Surf Report, Cert Petition Authored by Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Religious Liberty Clinic Director Eric Rassbach and Pepperdine Caruso Law Alumnus Colten Stanberry (JD '19) Granted by Supreme Court

New York Times, Supreme Court to Hear Catholic Charity’s Bid for Tax Exemption:

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Wisconsin was free to deny a tax exemption to a Catholic charity on the grounds that its activities were not primarily religious.

The court has been notably receptive to arguments from religious groups, and the new case will give the justices another opportunity to explore the limits of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty.

The case concerns a Wisconsin law that exempts religious groups from state unemployment taxes so long as they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

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

1. [455 Downloads]  Rotten to the Core: The EU's Court of Justice Decision in Apple, by Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar) & Stephen Daly (King's College London; Google Scholar)
2. [312 Downloads]  The Quiet Evolution In International Tax: Domestic Law And Double Taxation, by Craig Elliffe (University of Auckland; Google Scholar)
3. [239 Downloads]  The Consequences Of Limiting The Tax Deductibility Of R&D, by Mary Cowx (Arizona State; Google Scholar), Rebecca Lester (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Michelle L. Nessa (Michigan State; Google Scholar)
4. [192 Downloads]  Tax Neutrality and Distribution Regimes, by Pablo Hernández González-Barreda (Comillas Pontifical University; Google Scholar)
5. [191 Downloads]  The Spiderweb Of Partnership Tax Structures, by Ryan Hess (Georgia), Emily Black (NYU), Zaynah Javed (Stanford; Google Scholar), Jonathan Hennessy (Stanford; Google Scholar), Rebecca Lester (Stanford; Google Scholar), Jacob Goldin (Chicago; Google Scholar), Daniel E. Ho (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Annette Portz (IRS)

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. Scott Fruehwald, The Best Legal Education Scholarship Of 2024
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 50% Through The Fall 2025 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Up 24% (Black Applicants Are Up 36%)
3. Jonathan Skrmetti et al., 21 State AGs Rebuke ABA For Walking Back Plan To Remove ‘Race And Ethnicity’ From Law School Diversity Accreditation Standard
4. Steven Arrigg Koh (Boston University), “How Do I Design My New Law Course?”
5. Nancy B. Rapoport (UNLV), Training Law Students To Model Civility In An Uncivil Social Media World
6. ABA Journal, The Five Biggest Changes To The Bar Exam In 2024
7. W. Bradley Wendel (Cornell), The Good Lawyers Of January 6
8. Law.com, LSAC Sues ‘AI Tutor for LSAT’ For Copyright And Trademark Infringement
9. Nancy Levit (UMKC) & Allen Rostron (UMKC), Spring 2025 Law Review Article Submission Guide
10. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Legal Ed News Roundup

Tax:

1. Bloomberg, Trump Nominates Ken Kies To Be Assistant Treasury Secretary For Tax Policy
2. Michael Schaum (St. Thomas-FL), Stepping Up Basis In Living Taxpayer Assets With Upstream Wealth Transfers Through Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts
3. Xuan-Thao Nguyen (University of Washington) & Jeffrey Maine (Maine), Tax Treatment Of Crypto Losses
4. SSRN, The 50 Most Downloaded U.S. Tax Law Professors Of 2024
5. Marilyn Hajj (Virginia), Frequently Unanswered Questions: Scrutinizing The IRS's Informal Guidance
6. Benjamin Leff (American), Challenging The Johnson Amendment: What SAFE SPACE Gets Right—And Wrong
7. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: The 150 Day Rule For Filing Tax Court Petitions
8. Lisa Chen (UC-SF), More T In ESG: Tax As A Crucial Component Of ESG
9. Jacob Todres (St. John's), Current Developments In Tax Malpractice: Basics And Beyond
10. Haozheng Jiang (St. Louis) & Henry Ordower (St. Louis), Cryptocurrency Public Key Reporting: Using Embedded Technology To Aid Tax Compliance

Faith

1. New York Times Op-Ed (David Brooks), My Decade-Long Journey To Faith
2. New York Times Op-Ed (Nicholas Kristof), A Conversation About The Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t
3. Jewish Journal Op-Ed (Jim Gash, President & CEO of Pepperdine University), Jewish Students And Faculty At Christian Universities And Law Schools
4. New York Times Op-Ed (Peter Wehner), Why It Matters That Jesus Came From A Dysfunctional Family
5. Christianity Today, Wicked, Luigi Mangione, And Evil
6. New York Times (Elizabeth Dias), December 23 Is ‘Christmas Adam’
7. The Free Press (Douglas Murray), Winston Churchill’s Christmas Eve Message To America
8. New York Times Interview, Jonathan Roumie Plays Jesus To Millions. It Can Get Intense.
9. Christianity Today Op-Ed (Philip Yancey), Christmas Was Always God’s Plan
10. Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (William McGurn), All The Little Sisters Of The Poor Want For Christmas Is Religious Liberty

AALS Tax Section Program Today: Teaching Tax — Textbooks, Tools, And Techniques

Section on Taxation, Teaching Tax: Textbooks, Tools, and Techniques 
2:40 - 5:10 pm Moscone Center, Level Two South (Room 205)

This panel, designed for new law teachers as well as more experienced teachers, will explore the opportunities and challenges of selecting and developing course materials in tax courses. How do you choose the right textbook for the way you want to teach your class? Should you consider authoring a textbook or signing on to co-author an existing textbook? What supplemental materials should you consider?

• Bridget Crawford (Pace)
• Tessa Davis (South Carolina)
• Roberta Mann (Oregon) (moderator)
• Shu-Yi Oei (Duke)
• Alex Zhang (Emory)

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Next Week’s Tax Workshop

Monday, January 13: Kristin Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar) will present A Study Evaluating OIRA Review of Treasury Regulations (with Bridget C.E. Dooling (Ohio State; Google Scholar)) as part of the San Diego Tax Law Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Michelle Layser. 

For individual tax workshop posts, see here.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Eyal-Cohen Reviews Mehrotra's The Intellectual Origins Of The Modern International Tax Regime

This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Ajay K. Mehrotra (Northwestern; Google Scholar), The Intellectual Origins of the Modern International Tax Regime: Edwin R. A. Seligman, Economic Allegiance, and the League of Nations’ 1923 Report, 5 J. L. & Political Econ. 995 (2025).

As someone deeply fascinated by history and its nuanced narratives, I find immense value in exploring works that shed light on pivotal moments in intellectual and policy evolution. This Article reflects one such cornerstone of tax history literature by offering a unique opportunity to glimpse into how Edwin R. A. Seligman and the League of Nations’ 1923 Report shaped the development of international tax governance. Through a detailed exploration of historical context, intellectual contributions, and lasting impacts, Mehrotra does a great job uncovering the foundational principles that continue to influence contemporary tax policy.

The devastation of World War I left many economies in disarray, burdened with immense debts and the need for reconstruction.

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Please Join Us: Pepperdine Caruso Law AALS Reception TODAY (6:00-8:00 PM)

Pepperdine Caruso Law School invites law professors and deans to a reception
hosted by Dean Paul Caron at the 2025 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Friday, Jan. 10, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Feinstein's Theater/Kanpai Lounge (Lobby Level) | Hotel Nikko
Please join us for wine & beer and hors d'oeuvres