Raskolnikov Presents A New View Of Formal Equality Today At Columbia

Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) presents A New View of Formal Equality at Columbia today as part of its Faculty Workshop Series: 

When it comes to equality under the law, the contemporary focus is decidedly on substance rather than form. This is especially so when economic inequality is concerned. Formal equality of law—understood as the absence of formal legal distinctions based on the material resources of individuals—has few defenders. At least since Rawls, formal equality has been viewed as a cause of material inequality, a foundation of laissez-faire capitalism, a fig leaf of sorts designed to give a veneer of justice to the unjust exploitation of the weak in a market economy. Whatever equality under the law means in contemporary view, formal equality is not it.

This Essay argues that the contemporary view is mistaken. Legal reforms consistent with formal equality of law may, indeed, lead to more inequality, but they may also lead to less. In fact, a commitment to formally equal law offers a counterweight to the key neoliberal maxim that regulation of a market economy should aim only at maximizing economic efficiency.

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Effects Of Covid-Induced Remote Learning On LSAT And Bar Exam Performance

Michael Conklin (Texas A&M; Google Scholar), Effects of Covid-Induced Remote Learning on LSAT Performance: 

Existing research demonstrates that covid restrictions result in diminished academic performance. This first-of-its-kind study is designed to measure if this same effect is present with LSAT exam results. Additionally, the consistent result that racial minorities experience disproportionately bad educational outcomes from covid restrictions is also tested. The counterintuitive results from this study—that the same correlations between restrictions and race are not present when analyzing LSAT performance—illuminate numerous aspects of the LSAT exam and the people who choose to take it. Furthermore, the findings of this study will hopefully serve as a powerful catalyst to spark debate into issues regarding legal education in general and the unique nature of the LSAT exam more specifically.

Michael Conklin (Texas A&M; Google Scholar), Zoom to the Bar: How Remote Instruction Affected Bar Exam Performance: 

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WSJ: Rich Americans Prep Fail-Safe Estate Plans Ahead Of Election

Wall Street Journal, Rich Americans Prep Fail-Safe Estate Plans Ahead of Election:

With the presidential race in a dead heat, rich Americans are calling estate lawyers.

The wealthy want to know if they should take steps to protect their fortunes from higher estate taxes. Should a change under the 2017 tax cuts expire as scheduled after 2025—considered more likely with Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House and Democrats gaining the majority in Congress—the minimum wealth subject to the estate tax would be halved to roughly $7 million per person.

At that level, nearly 9,000 estates would owe estate tax in 2026, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. That is compared with roughly 4,000 estates estimated to owe the tax in 2025.

Whether it pays to draft a fail-safe estate plan for tax policies that haven’t been decided is up for debate. 

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One Year After Massive Budget Cuts, West Virginia Is Still Bleeding Faculty, Administrators

Following up on my previous post, Over 40% Of Full-Time Faculty Depart West Virginia Law School:  Inside Higher Ed, One Year After Massive Cuts, West Virginia Is Still Bleeding Faculty, Administrators:

It’s been almost a year since the West Virginia University Board of Governors voted to eliminate 143 faculty positions and 28 academic programs, including all foreign language and math graduate degrees, from its flagship Morgantown campus. About 8 percent of WVU’s majors disappeared in that vote.

Dozens of tenured professors were among the employees forced out. And as the fall semester gave way to spring, and concerns about future enrollment and finances continued, it became clear that those wouldn’t be the only losses. More professors announced they were departing of their own accord, and more still are on their way out. ...

The university hasn’t released figures for how many faculty members have voluntarily left the university atop its forced Academic Transformation cuts. Some faculty members crowdsourced a spreadsheet that lists 38 unnamed faculty members who got new jobs after Academic Transformation and who only started looking elsewhere because of it.

Five law faculty positions were cut as part of Academic Transformation, but an additional seven faculty decided to leave, the Daily Athenaeum student newspaper reported in April. And more departures are coming.

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Does The End Of Chevron Deference Mean A Weaker IRS?

Mitchell M. Gans (Hofstra), Does the End of Chevron Deference Mean a Weaker IRS?, 184 Tax Notes Fed. 1503 (Aug. 19, 2024):

The IRS was a powerful adversary when agencies enjoyed deference. Armed with Chevron deference, the IRS could resolve ambiguity in a code section by regulation. The courts deferred to that regulation — giving it “force of law” effect — if found to be reasonable, even if it was not the best interpretation. And even when there was prior inconsistent agency guidance or the regulation was adopted long after enactment of the underlying statute, Chevron nonetheless required deference.

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Weil Gotshal & Manges Tax Associate's Funny Departure Memo Includes A Clever ‘Rickroll’

Above the Law, Biglaw Farewell Memo Is A Classic Of The Genre:

Subject: Veni, Vidi, Arrivederci

Dearest Weil Fam,

I’m emailing to notify you that henceforward, any inappropriate communications from me will be reportable to the local authorities, not HR, because today is my last day at the firm.

My two and a half years here have far surpassed the professional experience I’d dreamt of. That’s partly because I don’t have an active social life, and I’m rarely let out in public. But that’s also thanks to the incredible people that I’ve met and worked with along the way. Thank you for all your support, guidance, friendship, and tolerance of my eccentricities (however successful you may have been at hiding your annoyance). There are so many people that I want to single out for their positive impact on my Weil career that I had to list them all in a separate document attached hereto.

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Gómez Presents Taxation’s Limits Today At Boston College

Luís C. Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) presents Taxation’s Limits, 119 Nw. U. L. Rev. __ (2024), at Boston College today as part of its Tax Policy Collaborative hosted by Diane Ring:

Countless pages have been devoted to the question of why should everyone pay tax, yet its obverse has gone largely unnoticed: why should some people and organizations not pay tax? Our tax system exempts from ordinary income taxation a wide and diverse array of people and organizations engaged in significant economic activity—from parents providing childcare services for their family, to consular activities and charities operating animal shelters—seemingly without a convincing explanation. Perhaps as a result of the dizzying diversity of activities that have been exempted from tax, scholars and policymakers have eluded comprehensively or coherently justifying our exemption regimes.

This Article develops a novel normative theory that rationalizes and justifies our current tax exemption regime. Rather than conceiving exemptions as subsidies or individual deviations from a normative base explainable by ordinary politics, the Article argues that exemptions are best understood as mapping the “limits” of tax. These limits are neither arbitrary nor merely a collection of individual subsidies to favored activities; rather, they are best seen as being reflective of deeper collective socio-political judgments about the scope of the State and the public sphere.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Nevada Green-Lights Three-Pronged Plan To Licensure
• ABA Journal, Stressed And Depressed, Only 34% Of Young Lawyers With Highest Student Debt Say JD Was Worth Cost, New ABA Survey Says
• amNY, New York Law School Changes Center’s Name in Educational Business Shift
• Georgia Law News, UGA Law Announces Initiatives Addressing Legal Needs for Rural Georgians and Expanding Access to a Legal Education
• Harvard Law News, 40th Anniversary of the Human Rights Program
• Law360, Georgia Law School Unveils Programs To Fill Rural Justice Jobs
• Legal Intelligencer, Leonard Packel, Villanova Law Professor, Dies at 89

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Denver Seeks To Hire An Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Prof

University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Faculty Posting: 

The University of Denver Sturm College of Law seeks applications from entry-level and lateral candidates for full-time, tenure-track faculty positions at the rank of Assistant, Associate, or full Professor of Law. Although we welcome candidates across all subject matter areas and methodological perspectives, we are particularly interested in candidates capable of teaching Torts, Civil Procedure, or Tax. We seek candidates with J.D. degrees (or their equivalents), outstanding academic records, relevant professional experience, a commitment to inclusive pedagogy, and the capacity to make future outstanding contributions in the realms of scholarship, teaching, and public engagement. The University of Denver and the Sturm College of Law are committed to building a diverse and inclusive educational environment and seek candidates whose research, teaching, service, and professional experiences can contribute to advancing these important institutional commitments. ... 

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Fordham Symposium: The Legal And Ethical Implications Of ChatGPT And Other Emerging Technologies

Symposium, The New AI: The Legal and Ethical Implications of ChayGPT and Other Emerging Technologies, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1785-2012 (2024): 

• Deborah W. Denno (Fordham; Google Scholar) &  Erica Valencia-Graham (Fordham), Foreword, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1785 (2024)
• Abdi Aidid (Toronto), Toward an Ethical Human–Computer Division of Labor in Law Practice, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1797 (2024)
• Katherine B. Forrest (Paul Weiss), Of Another Mind: AI and the Attachment of Human Ethical Obligations, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1815 (2024)
• Margaret Hu (William & Mary; Google Scholar), Eliott Behar & Davi Ottenheimer (Inrupt), National Security and Federalizing Data Privacy Infrastructure for AI Governance, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1829 (2024)
• Heather Hughes (American; Google Scholar), Educating Deal Lawyers for the Digital Age, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1855 (2024)
• Jake Karr (NYU) & Jason Schultz (NYU; Google Scholar), The Legal Imitation Game: Generative AI's Incompatibility with Clinical Legal Education, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1867 (2024)
• Matthew Sag (Emory; Google Scholar), Fairness and Fair Use in Generative AI, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1887 (2024)
• Daniel J. Solove (George Washington; Google Scholar) & Hideyuki Matsumi (Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Google Scholar), AI, Algorithms, and Awful Humans, 92 Fordham L. Rev. 1923 (2024)

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For-Profit Philanthropy Wins ARNOVA Outstanding Book Award

The Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) selected For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving, by Dana Brakman Reiser (Brooklyn; Google Scholar) & Steven A. Dean (Boston University), for the Outstanding Book Award in Nonprofit & Voluntary Action Research: 

This book exposes a migration of business practices, players, and norms into philanthropy that strains the regulatory regime sustaining public trust in elite generosity through accountability and transparency and proposes legal reforms and private solutions to restore it.

Practices, players, and norms native to the business sector have migrated into philanthropy, shattering longstanding barriers between commerce and charity. Philanthropies organized as limited liability companies, donor-advised funds sponsored by investment company giants, and strategic corporate philanthropy programs aligning charitable giving by multinationals with their business objectives paint a startling new picture of elite giving.

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Nick Saban, ‘The Process’ And The Bar Exam

Donald E. Campbell (Mississippi College), Get Your Head in the Game: Gamifying the Bar Examination, 40 Miss. C. L. Rev. 223 (2022): 

During a recent administration of the bar examination, I observed the following: a student who had a child ten days before the exam passed; a student on law review failed; a student whose predictors indicated he should fail the bar exam passed; two students who were in the library every day studying failed. Even though these folks were all taking the same exam, their outcomes varied dramatically, and there did not seem to be a common variable that predicted whether they would pass or fail. My first inclination was to throw up my hands in frustration and chalk it up to the fact that every student’s situation is unique.

I was satisfied to shrug and mutter, “what can you do?,” until I came across a podcast on Coach Nick Saban. Saban is a successful college football coach at the University of Alabama. As I listened to the podcast, I realized that the bar exam experience is very similar to a football team’s preparation for a championship game. The stakes are high, the preparation is intense and condensed, each individual bar taker will either win (pass) or lose (fail), and there are points assigned based on how well the performer does.

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• The Biden Administration’s Unconstitutional Student Loan Cancellation Plans & Congress’s Responsibility To Address The Root Cause Of The Student Loan Crisis
• Why Professors Can’t Teach
• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Sunday:

• The Top Five New Tax Papers
• NY Times Op-Ed: Elite Schools Are Thinking About Black Student Admissions The Wrong Way
• What Is The Difference Between A Church And A Religious Organization?
• Evangelicals In A Diverse Democracy: Is It Time To Let Jesus Take The Wheel?
• What Bluegrass-Loving Friars Taught Me About A Life Of Faith: Put First Things First

What Bluegrass-Loving Friars Taught Me About A Life Of Faith: Put First Things First

Fox News Op-Ed: What a Rollicking Band of Billboard Charting Bluegrass-Loving Friars Taught Me About a Life of Faith, by by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):

In August, my eyes welled with tears ... as I heard The Hillbilly Thomists perform live in concert for the first time. This sensational bluegrass band, which took its name from Southern Gothic fiction writer Flannery O’Connor’s delightful description of her own creative worldview, is comprised entirely of friars from the Order of Preachers.

For 50 weeks of the year, the clerics humbly live out their priestly vocations as, for instance, university chaplains, a parochial vicar and a bestselling author on theology. For the remaining two blessedly harmonious weeks, they tour. ...

Their folksy music is at once complex and lovely with lyrics rich in poetry and Scripture, but it’s their live performances that are joy incarnate. The Hillbilly Thomists’ love of God, of one other, and of music is unmistakable, an apt metaphor for the real presence that they so reverently adore. Turning Americana into sacred sound, they play with human hearts, light with — to borrow G.K. Chesterton’s definition of gratitude — happiness doubled by wonder. They are, in a very good word, winsome.

But why is this so? It’s too cute to chalk their staggering success up to Providence, which after all is not on stage with the band and keeping them in time when they perform. What about their music exudes this attractive happiness doubled by wonder? I think it is something maddeningly simple, a critical choice they’ve made in their lives, but equally maddeningly rare in the world, since so few people so unreservedly make the same choice.

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Evangelicals In A Diverse Democracy: Is It Time To Let Jesus Take The Wheel?

Christianity Today:  How to Find Common Ground When You Disagree About the Common Good, by John Inazu (Washington University; Google Scholar):

How do Christians live faithfully and as good neighbors in a world we don’t control?

In 2020, Tim Keller and I coedited a book titled Uncommon Ground. Our project convened a group of evangelical and evangelical-adjacent friends to reflect—as the subtitle said—on how Christians can live faithfully in a world of difference. Since then, however, I’ve rephrased the question for my own work. We should be faithful, yes, but also neighborly. And our world is not just host to real difference of belief; it’s also a world we don’t control.

I owe this subtle but important reframing to my friendship and work with Eboo Patel, the founder and president of Interfaith America. The most important interfaith organization in the country, Interfaith America does not advance a soupy multiculturalism that pretends that all roads lead to heaven or that our differences don’t matter. It takes religious particularity seriously, identifies conflicts and tensions created by that particularity, and works to find common ground across religious differences. ...

My question of how Christians can live faithfully and as good neighbors in a world we don’t control is the interfaith question. It asks how we can be fellow citizens, coworkers, and friends with people who do not share our belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This question has become increasingly important in a cultural context where Christians are too often seen as self-interested and unconcerned for our neighbors of other faiths and no faith, in our politics and in our personal lives. ...

One of my initiatives with Eboo, which this essay serves to announce, is called Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy. For the past two years, we’ve cultivated friendship and trust among a group of people whose voices collectively offer a counternarrative to the assumptions of the Christian and post-Christian right and an increasingly dechurched and unchurched left. We believe Christians can be friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens with those who don’t share our faith—and that we can do so within the fullness of our Christian identity. 

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What Is The Difference Between A Church And A Religious Organization?

Darryll K. Jones (Florida A&M), What is the Difference Between a Church and a Religious Organization? Amici line up in Support of Catholic Charities:

Friends of the Court are lining up in support of Catholic Charities Bureau's Petition for Certiorari.  Here is a brief recap:

Wisconsin denied a religious exemption from employment taxes to the Wisconsin Catholic Charities Bureau and its charitable sub-agents (independent organizations operating under the CCB umbrella) because they were not operated "primarily for religious purposes." CCB sought exemption from Wisconsin's unemployment tax but the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Catholic Charities Bureau is not churchy enough.  This, even though the Wisconsin Diocese controls and operates the CCB, and all separate organizations under CCB's general supervision are required to comply with CCB guidelines.  Those guidelines don't require adherence to or preaching of Catholic doctrine but merely that sub-agents practice good altruism, such as serving all comers without discrimination.  None of the guidelines require the separate CCB-approved and loosely controlled agents to proselytize.

The lower courts ruled that neither the CCB nor the subagents were operated for "primarily for religious purposes" within the statute's intended meaning because they didn't preach, teach or otherwise proselytize.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court, affirmed explaining that operating "primarily for religious purposes" means organizations federal law considers churches.  Plain old "religious organizations" don't get "church" status for purposes of Wisconsin's unemployment tax exemption.  At best, CCB and the organizations might just be considered "religious organizations" under federal law.  Religious organizations don't get extra special dispensation under federal tax law that churches get.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Elite Schools Are Thinking About Black Student Admissions The Wrong Way

New York Times Op-Ed:  Harvard, Brown and Other Top Schools Are Thinking About Black Freshmen the Wrong Way, by  John McWhorter (Columbia; Google Scholar):

Several highly selective universities have recently reported that in their first freshman classes admitted after the Supreme Court banned racial preferences in admissions, the number of Black and Latino students has fallen.

The percentage of Black freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, declined from 15 percent last fall to 5 percent for this fall. At Amherst College the number fell from 11 percent to 3 percent. Other schools have reported less precipitous but still noticeable drops, such as from 18 percent to 14 percent at Harvard, 10.5 percent to 7.8 percent at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill — a taxpayer-supported public university in a state where 23 percent of the population is Black — and 15 percent to 9 percent at Brown University, a school that has spent considerable energy looking at its early ties to the slave trade. Yale and Princeton held relatively steady, but an overall trend is clear.

The conventional wisdom is that this is alarming, but I’m not seeing it that way. We are trained to regard news on racial preferences in a way that makes us see tragedy where, through different glasses, we might just see change.

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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 #1 paper and a new paper debuting on the list at #4.

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

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

Tax:

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

Faith:

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

Why Professors Can’t Teach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

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

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

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

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Osofsky: Wellness And The Tax Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Impact Of Jarkesy On Civil Tax Fraud Penalties

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

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

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

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Tax Prof Moves, 2023-25

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

VAP Hires

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

Entry Level Hires

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

Lateral Moves

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

Promotions, Tenures, Chairs, and Professorships

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

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

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

Welcome 

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

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

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

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

Session #2: Foreign Tax Credit

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

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

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

September 12

Welcome Remarks 

• Joseph Landau (Dean, Fordham; Google Scholar) 

Keynote Address 

• Tania Tetlow (President, Fordham) 

Opening Panel: Religious Perspectives on Stewardship 

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

Workshop #1: Stewardship and Welcoming the Stranger

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

Workshop #2: Stewardship and Loving Your Neighbor

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

September 13

Workshop #3: Stewardship and Caring for the Environment

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

Concluding Panel 

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

Natelson: Direct Taxes And The Founders’ Originalism

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

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

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

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

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

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Boston College Seeks To Hire An Estate Planning Fellow

Boston College, Estate Planning Fellow:  

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

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

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American And Arkansas Seek To Hire A Clinical Tax Prof

American, Faculty Posting: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Fellowship Opportunities For The 117th National Tax Association Conference

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

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

NTA Equity and Inclusion Travel Fellowship

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Sunstein: Free Speech And The Educational Mission

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Calabresi: Academic Tuition And Student Loan Relief

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

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

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Vermont Seeks To Hire A Lateral Tax Prof

Vermont Law, Tenure-Track Faculty: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2024-2025 Law Student Tax Challenge: Important Dates

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

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

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

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

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The Moores Lost Their Claim And Moore

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

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

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

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Legal Ed News Roundup

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

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

University of Florida Law, Faculty Posting

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatives Are Rare in Academe. Does It Matter?

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

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

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

Here’s what they told us. ...

Brian Leiter (Chicago), Scholarship, Not Partisanship:

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Morriss: The Impact Of International Financial Centers

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

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

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

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

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

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