Jonathan Choi Leaves Minnesota For USC

Jonathan Choi (Minnesota; Google Scholar) has accepted a later offer from USC effective Fall 2023:

Professor Jonathan H. Choi specializes in law and artificial intelligence (applying natural language processing to study legal issues), statutory interpretation, and tax law.

Professor Choi earned his B.A. from Dartmouth College, summa cum laude, with a triple major in Computer Science, Economics, and Philosophy and high honors for his Computer Science thesis. He received a J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was Executive Bluebook Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Before entering the academy, he practiced tax law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Professor Choi has published articles in the New York University Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Yale Journal on Regulation, and Yale Law Journal, among others. His work has been covered by a wide variety of news outlets, including ABC News, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, the Daily Mail, Fox News, NBC Nightly News, the New Yorker, Reuters, the Star Tribune, and the Washington Post.

His recent publications include:

• Measuring Clarity in Legal Text, 91 U. Chi. L. Rev. __ (2024) 
• Subjective Costs of Tax Compliance, 108 Minn. L. Rev. __(2024) (with Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-LA; Google Scholar))
• ChatGPT Goes to Law School, 72 J. Legal Educ. __ (2023) (with Kristin Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar), Amy Monahan (Minnesota) & Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota; Google Scholar)) 

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Open Conversations At Pepperdine Caruso Law School: Building Culture, Developing Discourse, Nurturing Democracy

Jeffrey R. Baker (Pepperdine; Google Scholar) & Tanya Asim Cooper (Pepperdine; Google Scholar), Open Conversations: Building Culture, Developing Discourse, Nurturing Democracy:

[A]t our first Open Conversation, ... [o]ver fifty students attended, and we set out some simple guidance. This was not a teaching moment for the faculty, and it was not a debate. It was a conversation, discourse to share perspectives, an opportunity to speak and listen, to engage across difference, to give voice to pain and anger, to explore paths forward, all from the students’ perspectives and experiences. With general prompts and light moderation while breaking bread together, the conversation was rich, critical, vibrant, heartfelt, and serious. It did not fix all of the issues or resolve all the tension within our school, but it was a moment of genuine community struggling with itself but refusing to alienate each other. 

After that first Open Conversation, we continued to offer them when controversies erupted nationally or locally, refining the approach. ... The broad objective for Open Conversations is to build a healthy culture within our law school community. It is not to resolve every issue or to engage in antagonistic debate; there are plenty of other opportunities for that during law school. Rather, it is to enrich our discourse with care, respect, and dignity, even over the most contentious issues. Moderation and centrism are also not the aims; students advocate and argue in Open Conversations with conviction but within a framework that aims to hold our shared life at the heart of our discussions. In our current national season of extreme polarization, brutal partisanship, personal antagonism, and so-called “cancel culture” (all of which have been topics of our discussions), the Open Conversations are counter-cultural exercises in democratic engagement. 

To these ends, we developed a practice of lightly-moderated discussions over lunch around curated topics with important ground rules for the conversation. We typically have fifty to sixty students and another ten staff and faculty in the room. The ground rules are “conversational harnesses” to preserve the objectives of discourse and engagement, and we share them at the top of each open conversation:

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Taxing Zero

Hillel Nadler (Wayne State), Taxing Zero, 26 Fla. Tax Rev. __ (2023):

“Zero-price” transactions—in which goods or services are provided at a cash price of zero—are an increasingly important feature of economic life. Consumers can search the web, use email, listen to music, and even trade stocks, all without paying anything out of pocket. But zero-price transactions are not free: for-profit businesses provide products at zero-price because they get something valuable from consumers in return. Consumers pay with their time, attention, or private information. Zero-price transactions are not giveaways; they are a form of barter exchange.

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NY Times: Columbia University Drops Out Of U.S. News Rankings After Fall From #2 To #18 Last Year

New York Times, Columbia University Drops Out of U.S. News Rankings for Undergraduate Schools:

Columbia University announced on Tuesday that its undergraduate schools would no longer participate in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, the first major university to refuse to supply information to the influential undergraduate guide for students and parents. ...

Columbia’s move comes after it dropped in the rankings released in September — to No. 18 from No. 2 — and after many prestigious law and medical schools, including Columbia’s, decided to boycott the listings by refusing to provide data to U.S. News. ...

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The Unacknowledged Realities Of Extraterritorial Taxation

Laura Snyder (AARO, SEAT), The Unacknowledged Realities of Extraterritorial Taxation, 47 S. Ill. U. L.J. 243 (2023):

The U.S. extraterritorial tax system has evolved such that today it is more consequential than one century ago. The system, conceived in the stigmatization of overseas Americans, consists of highly penalizing taxation and banking policies that make it difficult for overseas Americans to live normally. The IRS is also a victim: it is unable to administer the system.

Many have sought to educate policymakers and the public. Detailed survey reports have been issued, documenting how overseas Americans experience the system. Research articles have been published, exposing certain problems of the system and, in some cases, proposing solutions.

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Former UC-Hastings Law School Loses Appeal To Block Suit Over Name Change

Reuters, Former 'Hastings' Law School Loses Appeal to Block Suit Over Name Change:

Descendants of Serranus Hastings suing over the name change of the former University of California Hastings College of the Law cleared a hurdle on Monday when a California appeals court tossed a bid brought by school officials who tried to block the lawsuit.

The California appeals court affirmed the dismissal of a motion brought by law school officials who are seeking to end litigation over the school’s name. Their anti-SLAPP motion argued that the name change was a protected public activity.

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Pop & Perjury: The IRS Valuation War With The Estate Of Michael Jackson

Beckett Cantley (Northeastern) & Geoffrey Dietrich (Cantley Dietrich), Pop & Perjury: The IRS Valuation War with the Estate of Michael Jackson, 21 New Hampshire L. Rev. 93 (2022):

When Michael Jackson died unexpectedly in Los Angeles, California, on June 25, 2009, his career and earnings were nearing an all-time low. Plagued by past sexual abuse allegations, scandals, and questionable health, Michael Jackson’s personal finances were purported to be in complete disarray. However, following his unexpected death, the value of his estate, which was reported to be near to nothing, swelled as the world remembered his beloved contributions to the world and began to purchase accordingly. Sales of Michael Jackson’s music began to soar high. The estate’s value soared even higher as it signed licensing agreements and released new feature films and theatrical material of Michael Jackson.

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Chat GPT-4 Understands Academic Attrition's Impact On Bar Passage But Does Anyone Else?

Rory D. Bahadur (Washburn) & Kevin Ruth (Independent), Chat Gpt-4 Understands Academic Attrition's Impact on Bar Passage But Does Anyone Else?, 63 Washburn L.J. Online __ (2023):

Artificial Intelligence allows us to understand the relationship between bar passage and academic attrition. This relationship is often obscured by the continued conflation of the concepts of causation and correlation. Disentangling these two concepts is essential to refute the empirically baseless narrative that the bar exam tests competency and to expose the systemic racism and monopolistic business practices the above narrative perpetuates. 

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Apple v. European Commission: Losing The War On Corporate International Transfer Pricing

Beckett Cantley (Northeastern) & Geoffrey Dietrich (Cantley Dietrich), Apple v. European Commission: Losing the War on Corporate International Transfer Pricing, 45 Loy. L.A. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 1 (2022):

For the last several years, Apple has been defending tax strategies utilized in Ireland before the European Union (EU) General Court. The European Commission, using Article 107 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, argues that Ireland provides state aid to Apple regarding several tax rulings, and that Apple owes a substantial tax liability. Although Apple was able to secure a favorable ruling before the EU General Court, the European Commission has appealed the General Court’s decision, and the final resolution to this case could be several years away. 

The outcome of this case has the potential to cause changes to the corporate tax structure within the EU and could either strengthen or weaken the Commission’s success in challenging the lack of arm’s length principles in transfer pricing methods through state aid concerns. If the European Commission is unsuccessful in this case, there may be a push for the EU to harmonize the corporate tax system in the hopes of limiting corporations’ ability to reduce tax liabilities by shifting profits between countries in the EU. 

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ABA Journal: Omnibus Law School Specialty Rankings Based On U.S. News Data

ABA Journal, These Law Schools Did Best in Blog's 'Omnibus Specialty Rankings' Based on US News Data:

The best law school for its showing in specialty rankings by U.S. News & World Report is Georgetown University, according to “omnibus specialty rankings” devised by a law dean.

The Georgetown University Law Center was ranked No. 15 in overall law school rankings by U.S. News & World Report. ... But Paul L. Caron, dean of the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, looked at how well law schools did in 13 separate specialty rankings by U.S. News & World Report to put together his omnibus specialty rankings for 100 law schools, which he published at the TaxProf Blog. The top 10 law schools for their performance in the specialty rankings are:
1. Georgetown University (tied for first for clinical law and had an average ranking of 10 in all 13 specialties)

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The Worker Classification Dilemma: The IRS Test And The Platform Economy

Griffin Toronjo Pivateau (Oklahoma State; Google Scholar) & Gina Nerger (Tulsa), The Worker Classification Dilemma: The IRS Test and the Platform Economy, 53 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 535 (2021):

The American workplace continues to evolve. The creation of the platform economy enabled employers to use independent contractors to perform work that employees traditionally performed. Proponents suggest that the platform economy offers the benefits of entrepreneurship to great numbers of people who would otherwise lack opportunity. Detractors argue that the platform economy robs workers of the benefits and protections provided to employees.

Courts, states, and administrative agencies use a confusing array of classification tests to determine whether workers are employees or independent contractors. These tests share roots in the common law agency test, which grew out of the historic rules of the master-servant relationship. The common law agency test, created in a different time and for a different purpose, does not address the problems of the modern workplace. In search of a test better suited to dealing with issues created by the platform economy, many states have recently turned to the use of the ABC worker classification test, a test that begins with the rebuttable presumption of employee status.

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Tom Hanks' Harvard Commencement Address: A Rare Moment Of Grace

Washington Post Op-Ed:  At Harvard, Tom Hanks Offered an Increasingly Rare Moment of Grace, by Nancy Gibbs (Harvard Kennedy School):

[L]ong after I forget what was said, I will remember what was done in a case I got to watch up close, a master class in class and wisdom about the moment we find ourselves in. When Tom Hanks, beloved actor, occasional author, typewriter aficionado and Most Trusted Person in America, spoke at Harvard’s 372nd commencement, he gave a performance in which the unscripted layers surpassed the careful text. And I’m betting those layers left a deeper mark on the more than 9,000 graduating students plus parents and friends who spread out across the quad to watch the show. ...

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Thomas & Scharff: Fake News And The Tax Law

Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina; Google Scholar) & Erin Scharff (Arizona State), Fake News and the Tax Law, 80 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 803 (2023):

The public misunderstands many aspects of the tax system. For example, people frequently misunderstand how marginal tax rates work, misperceive their own average tax rates, and believe they benefit from tax deductions for which they are ineligible. Such confusion is understandable given the complexity of our tax laws. Unfortunately, research suggests these misconceptions shape voter preferences about tax policy which, in turn, impact the policies themselves.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Consider Teaching Law In Business School As An Alternative Career
• ABA Journal, Law School Clinics Tackle Challenging Issue Of Heirs’ Property Rights
• ABA Journal, New GRE Will Take About Half As Much Time, Educational Testing Service Announces
• ABA Journal, Rights Work: UChicago constitutional law course brings together incarcerated youths, law students
• ABA Journal, ‘Significant Noncompliance’ In Admissions Standard For Pontifical Catholic Found By ABA Legal Ed Council
• ABA Journal, Slate For Next Term Announced By ABA Legal Ed Council
• ABA Journal, Some Law Schools Already Are Using ChatGPT To Teach Legal Research And Writing
• ABA Journal, The NextGen Bar Exam Includes An Expansion Of Skills Testing, So How Will Candidates Study?

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Tax Policy And COVID-19: An Argument For Targeted Crisis Relief

Assaf Harpaz (Drexel), Tax Policy and COVID-19: An Argument for Targeted Crisis Relief, 31 Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 235 (2021):

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp global economic decline. By the end of 2021, the U.S. government responded to the downturn with record fiscal legislation totaling over $5 trillion, which includes considerable tax relief. Most notably, the U.S. government distributed over $800 billion in three rounds of advanced refundable tax credits (known as recovery rebates, or stimulus checks) to most households. Tax relief has been unprecedented in scale but has often been the product of political circumstances rather than principled policy design. Tax relief thus remains largely undertheorized and politically motivated.

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Texas Federal Judge Requires All Lawyers To File Certificate Verifying Any Use Of AI

Following up on my previous post, New York Times, Here’s What Happens When A Lawyer Uses ChatGPT: 

Eugene Volokh (UCLA; Google Scholar), Federal Judge Requires All Lawyers to File Certificates Related to Use of Generative AI:

The certificates must "attest[] either that no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT, Harvey.AI, or Google Bard) or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being."

David Lat (Original Jurisdiction), Judge of the Week: Judge Brantley Starr:

Remember the debacle I discussed last week involving lawyers who filed a brief replete with multiple citations to fake cases, courtesy of ChatGPT? One judge is already taking action to prevent that from happening in his court.

As reported by Professor Eugene Volokh, Judge Brantley Starr (N.D. Tex.) issued a standing order for a “Mandatory Certification Regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence” ... Judge Starr identified two problems with AI tools: “hallucinations,” when they just make stuff up, and bias, when they “act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle.”

Judge Starr’s order generated ample buzz, positive and negative.

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Lesson From The Tax Court: Temporary vs. Indefinite Commutes

When I worked in downtown Washington D.C. I had a 50+ minute commute from my home in Wheaton Md.  But I did not have to drive.  I walked 15 minutes to Wheaton metro, had a 30+ minute metro ride to Federal Triangle, and then a 5 minute walk to my office.  That was a lovely commute.  Longish but low-stress.

Now I work at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.  This is not a town for walking.  So I drive to work.  But it’s only 4-6 minutes from my home.  Sweet!  I really cannot complain. 

Lots of folks, however, have the worst of both worlds: they have a long commute and they have to drive it.  That can be stressful.  And expensive.

It is not surprising that folks with really long drive commutes might think they should be able to deduct their commuting costs, especially if they are at a job where continued employment may be uncertain.  To them, their work seems temporary because they know it might end at any time.  But in Joseph Michael Ledbetter and Ashley Jones Ledbetter v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2023-19 (May 25, 2023) (Judge Paris), we learn that just because work might end at any time does not make it temporary.  It makes it indefinite.  And while travel to a temporary work location outside the area where the taxpayer lives may be deductible, travel to an indefinite work location is not.  Details below the fold.

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NY Times: CUNY Law Graduate's Commencement Speech Denouncing Israel And NYPD Is Condemned By Administration; Faculty Demands Apology From Administration

New York Times, She Attacked Israel and the N.Y.P.D. It Made Her Law School a Target.:

A student gave a commencement address at the famously progressive CUNY law school. Two weeks later, she was attacked by the tabloids and the mayor, and the school disavowed her speech.

Commencement season rarely passes without incident. In a bit of counterprogramming, last week the actress Michelle Yeoh addressed Harvard Law School’s Class of 2023, talking about “leaping off high perches into scary voids.” Nevertheless, it was a Yemeni immigrant named Fatima Mousa Mohammed, speaking to her graduating class of the City University of New York School of Law, whose words — absent the genre’s heavy-handed metaphors if not the heavy hand itself — left a more powerful impression on the news cycle.

Within a few weeks, she had achieved a notoriety she could not have expected and was unlikely to want, as her views — which is to say the views of a 24-year-old woman coming out of a small, modestly ranked law school in Queens — became the subject of nearly nonstop, consistently furious international tabloid coverage.

The law school at CUNY exists both as the most diverse in the country and among the most ideologically filtered. Like so many public law schools, it skews toward the production of lawyers who end up working in the interest of the common good. “Law in the service of human needs” is the institutional motto; the politics of resistance remain its dominant ethos.

Two years ago, the dean, Mary Lu Bilek, long known for her commitments to racial justice, resigned after inadvertently likening herself to a “slaveholder” in a meeting in which she had been trying to make the point that she was responsible for whatever injustices remained at the school. Students petitioned for her to turn over the remainder of her salary to the Black Law Students Association and remove her name from their diplomas.

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• A 'Return To Normalcy' For Law School Admissions
• Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels
• ABA Council Finds Law School In 'Significant Noncompliance' With Admissions Accreditation Standard: 137 LSAT|3.26 UGPA Medians, 73% 2-Year Ultimate Bar Passage Rate

Sunday:

• Josie Shands Caron (2007-2023)
• NY Times Op-Eds: The Role Of Technology In Our Lives
• NY Times Op-Ed: Tim Keller Showed Me What A Christian Leader Should Be
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

Josie Shands Caron (2007-2023)

We put down our beloved dog Josie on Friday and are filled with grief and gratitude. Grief because our home and our lives are emptier now without her. Gratitude because she was everything one could want in a dog.

Josie joined our family in November 2009 when we were living in Cincinnati. We had put down our dog Sandy in 2006, and I had issued a decree: no more dogs. Because our son Reed and daughter Jayne would be leaving for college in August 2009 and August 2010, respectively, my wife Courtney and I did not want to be saddled with a dog in our empty nest years. Jayne took the news particularly hard, as she has a special love for dogs.

In early November 2009, the senior pastor of our church gave a wonderful message on the importance of celebrating important milestones in our lives. He talked about how he was trying to make his high school senior's last year at home special by taking his son on a long road trip on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. After watching a hokey Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie, A Dog Named Christmas, in which a family provides a foster home over Christmas for a dog from a local shelter, I thought that would be a great thing to do for Jayne before she left for college. Following up on the movie, animal shelters nationwide were sponsoring a Foster a Lonely Pet for the Holidays Promotion, and I found a wonderful participating local shelter. I told Jayne we wanted to make this last Christmas at home a memorable one for her by fostering a dog over the holidays. I made her sign a contract promising that the dog would go back to the shelter on December 26 — no exceptions, and no fuss.

Jayne chose the dog, and we opened our home (and our hearts) to Josie, a mutt mix of Pit Bull, Chow, and German Shepherd. After Josie's first days in our home, Courtney and I decided we would tell Jayne on Christmas morning that we were adopting Josie. We also decided to keep the foster ruse going by dropping Josie off at the shelter on Saturdays so they could bring her to adoption fairs at a local PetSmart. Jayne prayed in the car that Josie would not be adopted, but I said we had to think of Josie's best interests and hope that a wonderful family would adopt her. I worked things out so the shelter would not bring Josie to the adoption fair, and Jayne and I would return three hours later to take Josie home (to Jayne's great relief). It was a very special Christmas, as Jayne cried with delight when she opened the last present under the tree: Josie's adoption papers.

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NY Times Op-Eds: The Role Of Technology In Our Lives

Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)) has published three New York Times op-eds on the role of technology in our lives:

1. How do we help kids navigate a technological world?
2. How do we discern what technology to adopt?
3. How does technology change our understanding of what it is to be human?

1. Managing Screen Time Is a Family Matter:

[W]hen I get together with friends who are also parents, the conversation eventually turns to a repeated theme: how to handle screens and technology use with our kids. It feels like every parent I know is wrestling with this. I am, too.

In 2018, Krista Boan and Tracy Foster co-founded Screen Sanity, a nonprofit to help parents, grandparents and other caregivers navigate these concerns. Screen Sanity offers tips, tools and trainings to “help families raise happy, healthy kids in an increasingly digital world.” I wanted to speak with Boan about the practical things caregivers need to keep in mind as we think through technology use in our homes. This interview has been edited and condensed. ...

Tish Harrison Warren: My growing concern is that even the best types of screen use displace the actual material world around us. Minutes or hours on screens are minutes or hours kids (and adults) are not talking to people around them, going on walks, learning an instrument, staring into space or interacting with the material world.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Tim Keller Showed Me What A Christian Leader Should Be

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  New York Times Op-Ed:  Tim Keller Showed Me What a Christian Leader Should Be, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):

In my early 20s, I attended an event where Tim Keller, an orthodox, evangelical Presbyterian pastor, was having a public debate with a secular humanist. In the nearly 20 years that have passed since the event, I still recall one moment distinctly. The secular humanist struggled with a point he was making and was unclear, something that happens often enough in public speaking. Keller could have chosen to go in for the kill rhetorically and make his opponent look foolish. Instead, he paused and asked, “Is this what you mean?” Keller then restated the secular argument in a clearer, better way, arguing against his own point of view. The other speaker agreed that was what he had meant, and Keller continued, countering the (now much stronger) point.

This generosity and understanding toward those with whom we disagree helped shape the way I now see the world. It had more of an impact on me, as a Christian, than any argument could. Keller refused the easier route of debate, insisting on finding the best argument of others, even if it meant strengthening his opponent’s case. He was in pursuit of truth and kindness, not point scoring. That night I saw what Christian leaders should be like.

Keller died [last] month, at 72, from pancreatic cancer. ... Keller had a remarkably brilliant mind and an ability to communicate complicated theological ideas in simple, relatable ways. He was courageous yet profoundly humble. What I will most remember him for, though, is his generous kindness. ... Mostly, Tim wanted to talk about the hope and beauty he found in Jesus and how we might best communicate that hope in our moment. ...

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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 debuting on the list at #1 and #5:

1. [340 Downloads]  The Unacknowledged Realities of Extraterritorial Taxation, by Laura Snyder (Association of Americans Resident Overseas)
2. [311 Downloads]  Taxation of Information and the Data Revolution, by Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
3. [238 Downloads]  Capital Taxation and Market Power, by Kimberly Clausing (UCLA; Google Scholar)
4. [231 Downloads]  The Employment Effects of Tax Subsidies for the Construction of Amazon Facilities, by Ike Brannon (Jack Kemp Foundation) & Matthew Winden (University of Wisconsin (Whitewater); Google Scholar)
5. [196 Downloads]  The Inflation Reduction Act's Impact On Tax Compliance—And Fiscal Sustainability, by Natasha Sarin (Yale; Google Scholar; Former Counselor on Tax Policy, U.S. Treasury Department) & Mark J. Mazur (Former Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, U.S. Treasury Department),

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education:

1. New York Times, Here’s What Happens When A Lawyer Uses ChatGPT
2. U.S. News, 2024 Omnibus Law School Specialty Rankings
3. U.S. News, 2024 Omnibus Law School Specialty Rankings v. Overall Rankings
4. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Preview Of The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Admissions
5. Law.com, Duquesne, FIU, Kansas, Oklahoma, And Texas A&M Are Among The Biggest U.S. News Law School Rankings Winners
6. ABA Journal, Some Law Schools Already Are Using ChatGPT To Teach Legal Research And Writing
7. Inside Higher Education, 17 Universities And Law Schools Have Full Satellite Campuses In Washington, D.C.
8. John Bliss (Denver) & David Sandomierski (Western), Learning Without Grade Anxiety: Lessons From The Pass/Fail Experiment In North American J.D. Programs
9. Law.com, Tenured Law Professor Pulled From His Classroom Faces Termination. He Wants To Know Why?
10. U.S. News 2024 Law School Specialty Rankings:

• Legal Writing
• Tax Law
• Trial Advocacy

Tax:

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Substantiating Gambling Losses On Per-Casino Basis
2. Daniel Shaviro (NYU), Two New Tax Papers on SSRN
3. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: On Time Is Late
4. Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan), Three New International Tax Papers On SSRN
5. Law, Society, And Taxation, Thursday's Panel
6. Law, Society, And Taxation, Friday's Panels
7. Law, Society, And Taxation, Saturday's Panels
8. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
9. David Elkins (Netanya), Review Of Ancillary Benefits And Income Versus Consumption Taxation in Liam Murphy’s And Thomas Nagel’s 'The Myth of Ownership,' by Daniel Shaviro (NYU)
10. Roundup, Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

Faith: 

1. Tim Keller, Growing My Faith In The Face Of Death
2. Roundup, The Life, Death, And Legacy Of Tim Keller
3. Roundup, More On The Life, Death, And Legacy Of Tim Keller
4. New York Times Op-Ed (Ross Douthat), Pro-Trump Christians, Never-Trump Christians, And Tim Keller
5. New York Times Op-Ed (Tish Harrison Warren), How a Cancer Diagnosis Makes Jesus’ Death and Resurrection Mean More: An Interview With Tim Keller

A 'Return To Normalcy' For Law School Admissions

Reuters, It’s a 'Return to Normalcy' for Law School Admissions:

The number of people applying to law school has dropped for the second straight year—further indication that the 13% applicant surge in 2021 was a COVID-19 one-off.

Law school applicants were down 2.4% over last year as of Thursday, according to the latest data from the Law School Admission Council. By that time last year, the council had received 96% of the applicant total. That means this cycle’s national applicant pool is likely to be slightly smaller than the previous year, which was 12% smaller than in 2021.

"It's a return to normalcy," said Susan Krinsky, the council’s executive vice president for operations. "It's very consistent with the last five years except for 2021."

Applicants are down the most in New England (-8.3%), Mountain West (-6.5%), and Northeast (-6.2%):

Applications are down at 121 law schools, up at 68 law schools, and flat at 9 law schools:

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the 2023 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico:

Taxation & Social Impact (Tessa Davis (South Carolina), Chair/Discussant):

The tax code is used in a vareity of ways to enact or support social goals that are not necessarily explicitly tied to economic ends. The papers in this session will think about how tax and spending programs are used to achieve particular ends. Papers in the session will consider both intended and unintended consequences of the relevant provisions on the social outcomes of the individual taxpayers affected by the rules.

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ABA Council Finds Law School In 'Significant Noncompliance' With Admissions Accreditation Standard: 137 LSAT|3.26 UGPA Medians, 73% 2-Year Ultimate Bar Passage Rate

ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Notice of Finding of Significant Noncompliance With Standards 501(a) and 501(b) (May 31, 2023):

At its May 11-12, 2023, meeting, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association (the “Council”) considered the status of Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico School of Law (the “Law School”) and concluded that the Law School is not in compliance with Standards 501(a) ["A law school shall adopt, publish, and adhere to sound admission policies and practices consistent with the Standards, its mission, and the objectives of its program of legal education."] and 501(b) ["A law school shall only admit applicants who appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar."].

In accordance with Rule 51(b)(7), the Managing Director shall provide public notification of the Council’s conclusions and decision concerning a law school’s significant noncompliance with one or more ABA Standards under Rule 11(a)(4). The Council considers any finding of noncompliance with Standard 501 to be such a finding. ...

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Elkins Reviews Shaviro's Income Versus Consumption Taxation In 'The Myth of Ownership'

This week, David Elkins (Netanya; Google Scholar) reviews a new paper by Daniel Shaviro (NYU, Google Scholar), Ancillary Benefits and Income Versus Consumption Taxation in Liam Murphy’s and Thomas Nagel’s 'The Myth of Ownership':

The question of whether income or consumption is a more appropriate tax base has occupied a prominent place in the tax policy discourse since about the 1970s. Although deliberated in the literature for centuries — the names Hobbes, Smith, Mill, Fisher, and Kaldor come to mind — it appears to have been William Andrews’ 1974 Harvard Law Review article, A Consumption-Type or Cash Flow Personal Income Tax, that brought the issue to the attention of tax academics and policymakers. That article, which may also be credited with having introduced the Cary Brown theorem into the legal academic discourse, triggered debate concerning the proper tax base and analysis of the extent to which the current income tax actually does tax income. It may also have indirectly sparked the call in some political quarters to replace the income tax with a consumption tax.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• 2024 U.S. News Legal Writing Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Trial Advocacy Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings v. Overall Rankings
• ABA Journal, Some Law Schools Already Are Using ChatGPT to Teach Legal Research and Writing
• John Bliss (Denver) & David Sandomierski (Western), Learning without Grade Anxiety: Lessons from the Pass/Fail Experiment in North American J.D. Programs
• ETS Press Release, ETS Reduces GRE From 4 Hours to 2 Hours (LSAT Is 3 Hours)
• Scott Fruehwald (Legal Skills Prof Blog), A Companion to Torts: Learning to Think Like a Torts Lawyer by Doing Exercises: Chapter Three

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Clean Energy Companies Race to Prepare Tax Credit Applications
• Bloomberg, Hedge Funds Cash In on Covid-Era Tax Credit With IRS Backlog
• Bloomberg, Summers Sees Higher Fed Interest Rates, Increased Taxes
• Law360, Pressure For Corporate Tax Transparency May Just Be Beginning
• Los Angeles Times, Celebs Dodged Millions in L.A.’s ‘Mansion Tax.’ Meet the Industry Guarding Their Wealth

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2024 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings v. Overall Rankings

Following up on yesterday's post, 2024 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings:

Here are the law schools whose U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Ranking most exceeds their overall U.S. News Ranking:

	School	Specialty Rank	Overall Rank	Difference
1	Santa Clara	77	158	+81
2	Brooklyn*	46	111	+65
3	Illinois-Chicago	97	159	+62
3	Suffolk	71	133	+62
5	American*	28	89	+61
6	Howard	66	125	+59
7	Hofstra	82	140	+58
8	Widener (DE)	119	175	+56
9	Denver	25	80	+55
10	Rutgers*	57	109	+52
11	CUNY	104	154	+50
11	Mitchell | Hamline*	117	167	+50
13	Syracuse*	75	122	+47
14	Pacific	95	141	+46
15	UC-San Francisco*	18	60	+42
15	UNLV	47	89	+42
17	Baltimore	96	135	+39
18	UC-Davis*	22	60	+38
19	Nova	134	171	+37
20	Missouri-Kansas City	99	135	+36
21	Golden Gate	145	180	+35
22	Pace	98	131	+33
23	Loyola-Chicago*	53	84	+31
23	Willamette	124	155	+31
25	Hawaii	105	135	+30
25	San Diego	48	78	+30
25	San Francisco*	135	165	+30
28	Chicago-Kent	70	99	+29
28	South Texas*	133	162	+29
30	Seattle*	83	111	+28
31	DePaul	108	135	+27
31	Houston	33	60	+27
31	Michigan State	84	111	+27
31	Vermont	137	164	+27
35	Creighton*	130	155	+25
36	Cal-Western*	151	175	+24
36	Case Western	56	80	+24
36	Temple	30	54	+24
36	UC-Irvine*	11	35	+24
40	District of Columbia	158	180	+22
40	George Washington	13	35	+22
42	Catholic	101	122	+21
43	Miami	51	71	+20
44	Indiana (McKinney)	80	99	+19
45	University of Arizona	36	54	+18
45	Widener (PA)	141	159	+18
47	Fordham	12	29	+17
47	Maryland*	34	51	+17
49	Loyola-L.A.	44	60	+16
49	North Dakota	164	180	+16

Here are the law schools whose U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Ranking most trails their overall U.S. News Ranking:

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the 2023 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting:

Tax Advocacy & Tax Justice (Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar), Chair/Discussant):

Tax lawyers operate inside a system that often challenges traditional notions of zealous advocacy in lawyering. Further, decisions around tax law, tax policy, and tax lawyering must be made in the larger context of goals around social policy and desired social outcomes. The papers in this session examine both particular tax lawyers but also the larger issues faced by tax lawyers as a whole. Also considered is the role the tax law plays in affecting lawyers' actions and infuencing their decisions.

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Bridging The Gap Between Law Knowledge And Legal Practice

Law.com, Bridging the Gap Between Law Knowledge and Legal Practice: How Lean Adviser Can Help Students:

We’ve all heard the criticism that a law school education doesn’t prepare future attorneys for the realities of practicing law.

Despite many recent efforts by law schools to combat this stigma, there remains a gap between learning to think like a lawyer and actually understanding how to work as one.

Law.com recently interviewed Alex Geisler, London-based litigation partner with Duane Morris and creator of Lean Adviser—a structured program that helps lawyers efficiently and consistently deliver high value to clients resulting in repeat business and long-term profitable relationships for all parties—to discuss how Lean Adviser could supplement traditional legal education. ...

Law.com: What would you want law deans to know about Lean Adviser?

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Grewal: Billionaire Taxes And The Constitution

Andy Grewal (Iowa; Google Scholar), Billionaire Taxes and the Constitution, 57 Ga. L. Rev. ___ (2023):

The United States now has ten times as many billionaires as it had just a few decades ago. This ever-growing class has sparked congressional interest in “billionaire tax” proposals. These proposals would generally require that billionaires recognize income when their asset values increase, even if they have not sold their assets.

Under existing doctrine, billionaire taxes likely violate the realization requirement embedded in the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution. However, this Article argues that existing Sixteenth Amendment doctrine suffers from deep infirmities and theoretical inconsistencies. With the conceptually sound interpretive approach advanced in this Article, a billionaire tax would pass constitutional muster.

Learning Without Grade Anxiety: Lessons From The Pass/Fail Experiment In North American J.D. Programs

John Bliss (Denver) & David Sandomierski (Western), Learning without Grade Anxiety: Lessons from the Pass/Fail Experiment in North American J.D. Programs, 42 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 555 (2022):

One of the core goals of legal education is to help students learn. A conventional assumption is that hierarchical grading, as a motivator for student effort, is a key factor that promotes learning. This assumption should be rigorously assessed rather than taken for granted. Our findings, in the unique Spring 2020 context of Pass/Fail grading in North American J.D. programs, only weakly support the notion that grades incentivize effort. And, to the extent that grades do somewhat incentivize effort, our findings do not support the conclusion that extra effort is necessarily supportive of learning. Moreover, we find that grades may negatively impact student anxiety to an extent that is detrimental to learning. In sum, our analysis provides little support for the notion that hierarchical grades support learning in legal education.

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Wallace: A Democratic Perspective On Tax Law

Clint Wallace (South Carolina), A Democratic Perspective on Tax Law, 98 Wash. L. Rev. ___ (2023):

As democracies around the world have faltered, legal scholars in fields as diverse as election law, labor law, and administrative law have turned to tax law to repair and support democratic governments. Taxation offers a toolset well equipped to address concerns raised by democratic theorists focused on the conditions that shape a democratic community and help it to flourish. Tax laws can rectify social dynamics characterized by economic inequality and can help establish and strengthen civic institutions, among many possible interventions. But legal scholars evaluating and designing tax policies generally focus on the standard normative criteria of efficiency, equity, and administrability, with little specific regard for democratic concerns. This separation from democratic theory has left tax law scholars ill-equipped to respond to calls for help from more democracy-focused fields of law. Thus, tax scholarship mostly has not engaged with the increasingly important project of strengthening democratic governance.

This Article argues that democracy should be a more central consideration in designing and evaluating tax laws in a democratic system of government, exploring a set of democracy criteria that can bolster the standard normative criteria used to evaluate tax policy.

The democracy criteria considered here ask: does a change in tax rules strengthen or undermine democratic governance? This Article draws on democratic theory to identify pressure points where taxation might shape democracy, building on work by tax scholars who have tried to integrate democratic values into the standard criteria. I make the case that democratic considerations should not be subordinated to other criteria, but rather should stand on their own. I apply the democracy criteria to wealth tax proposals, showing how a democratic perspective illuminates a contemporary debate in U.S. tax policy.

Approached in this way, a democratic perspective on tax law and policy can facilitate tax responses—in scholarly discourse and in policy prescriptions—to current challenges facing democracies around the world, answering the calls of scholars in other fields who (appropriately) view tax rules as sites of important potential interventions to shore up democracy.

2024 U.S. News Omnibus Specialty Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings include the rankings for 13 specialty programs at 196 law schools. Here are the Top 100 law schools, determined by giving equal weight to each of the 13 separate specialty rankings:

1. Business/Corporate Law
2. Clinical Law
3. Constitutional Law
4. Contracts/Commercial Law
5. Criminal Law
6. Dispute Resolution
7. Environmental Law
8. Health Care Law
9. Intellectual Property Law
10. International Law
11. Legal Writing
12. Tax Law
13. Trial Advocacy

	School	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	Avg.
1	Georgetown*	12	1	15	14	4	21	12	6	7	5	8	3	22	10.0
2	Harvard*	1	13	1	3	2	1	9	6	19	3	121	13	37	17.6
3	Northwestern*	14	6	15	11	15	7	44	41	22	18	21	4	31	19.2
4	Michigan*	9	9	9	8	12	34	37	17	14	10	8	10	74	19.3
5	Stanford*	4	19	3	3	2	11	9	5	1	10	104	13	68	19.4
6	UC-Berkeley*	4	13	5	5	7	29	3	39	1	7	122	24	15	21.1
7	UCLA*	9	25	12	8	12	34	4	19	9	15	115	7	6	21.2
8	NYU*	4	5	5	5	1	29	4	52	3	1	104	1	68	21.7
9	Duke*	15	25	12	14	4	34	15	29	9	18	84	10	80	26.8
10	Virginia*	8	69	5	8	7	21	26	46	22	10	46	5	80	27.2
11	UC-Irvine*	47	6	24	35	25	43	32	35	9	25	8	6	80	28.8
12	Fordham	19	9	35	19	17	15	61	79	22	18	52	24	6	28.9
13	Columbia*	1	25	8	2	4	26	7	52	19	2	118	7	108	29.2
13	George Washington	32	34	35	54	30	34	12	20	4	7	46	24	47	29.2
13	Texas	19	34	9	14	22	16	39	46	18	25	84	16	37	29.2
16	Yale*	9	4	2	11	12	34	26	15	46	3	115	22	96	30.4
17	Penn*	4	25	12	5	7	34	42	20	14	18	110	18	96	31.2
18	UC-San Francisco*	36	22	29	29	36	11	18	11	31	25	122	18	24	31.7
19	Arizona State	44	45	35	38	36	14	19	14	46	25	4	36	74	33.1
20	Washington University	22	9	21	19	22	18	71	26	36	25	122	40	24	35.0
21	Cornell*	15	51	9	14	22	29	55	52	28	15	68	36	80	36.5
22	Ohio State	44	78	24	35	15	2	42	15	51	58	32	50	40	37.4
22	UC-Davis*	22	59	17	38	17	32	17	39	22	23	122	31	47	37.4
24	North Carolina	29	34	21	18	17	68	32	35	60	58	13	24	80	37.6
25	Denver	68	9	57	64	30	43	19	61	51	35	13	46	6	38.6
26	Vanderbilt*	12	45	17	13	7	34	7	46	28	18	122	62	96	39.0
27	Boston University	19	59	24	29	36	60	61	1	9	25	98	13	80	39.5
28	American*	60	1	57	64	30	64	44	20	7	5	104	50	15	40.1
29	Minnesota	22	25	24	19	30	68	32	26	42	23	68	22	126	40.5
30	Florida	25	69	29	38	45	18	19	46	67	58	68	2	59	41.8
30	Temple	60	59	57	38	61	68	71	17	46	10	25	29	2	41.8
32	Chicago	1	34	3	1	7	68	71	67	36	9	118	7	126	42.2
33	Houston	47	69	86	47	50	68	26	9	6	53	21	44	24	42.3
34	Maryland*	60	13	48	72	36	9	19	6	46	47	98	68	40	43.2
35	Emory	25	89	29	23	36	50	58	29	31	38	42	81	35	43.5
36	University of Arizona	36	45	35	59	45	34	39	29	67	38	8	62	80	44.4
37	Georgia	29	34	42	29	61	50	71	41	74	15	77	50	13	45.1
38	Boston College	25	34	35	25	61	60	44	41	42	38	52	16	139	47.1
39	University of Washington*	54	34	65	54	25	43	19	52	28	47	16	44	139	47.7
40	William & Mary	29	89	17	25	20	68	44	94	46	25	52	68	47	48.0
41	Wake Forest	47	89	48	38	36	68	55	20	74	67	5	62	40	49.9
42	USC	17	89	35	19	36	64	19	61	42	75	113	24	64	50.6
43	Indiana (Maurer)	36	89	42	47	45	68	32	46	36	25	52	18	126	50.9
44	Loyola-L.A.	54	69	65	59	30	60	125	52	51	67	32	10	5	52.2
45	Notre Dame	32	69	17	29	50	68	61	94	60	25	84	46	47	52.5
46	Brooklyn*	32	34	42	38	20	68	131	83	92	47	16	40	47	53.1
47	UNLV	66	34	65	45	50	9	80	41	60	90	2	46	108	53.5
48	San Diego	36	106	21	47	30	68	71	52	22	58	122	18	47	53.7
49	Colorado	47	78	53	54	25	68	15	79	36	58	68	50	80	54.7
49	Texas A&M	68	51	79	47	119	7	32	67	9	58	32	62	80	54.7
51	Miami	54	25	53	54	84	50	39	67	67	25	98	40	68	55.7
51	Wisconsin*	44	59	29	25	36	68	44	67	81	42	90	31	108	55.7
53	Loyola-Chicago*	74	59	57	95	73	43	88	4	74	58	46	50	13	56.5
54	Georgia State	78	19	42	72	50	67	103	1	42	67	122	50	24	56.7
55	SMU	47	51	79	64	36	50	80	29	60	42	104	50	47	56.8
56	Case Western	66	59	57	72	84	68	44	11	60	10	46	119	47	57.2
57	Rutgers*	92	19	57	64	50	68	80	41	81	53	16	68	68	58.2
58	Florida State	47	106	29	29	50	68	19	52	60	75	122	36	74	59.0
59	Tulane*	32	45	74	47	45	43	26	94	60	35	122	50	108	60.1
60	Washington & Lee	36	45	53	45	50	68	80	61	74	42	77	40	126	61.3
61	Utah	54	89	42	72	25	68	12	25	31	35	122	68	166	62.2
62	Alabama	47	51	24	35	50	68	101	67	105	90	90	36	47	62.4
63	Pepperdine Caruso	54	34	53	59	84	2	113	103	88	53	110	29	59	64.7
64	Villanova	68	51	65	64	73	68	101	61	67	84	68	31	47	65.2
65	Iowa	25	59	48	23	61	68	88	67	51	58	110	50	158	66.6
66	Howard	92	34	74	47	45	68	125	103	51	50	52	109	40	68.5
67	Illinois	36	89	29	25	61	43	80	83	51	67	122	68	139	68.7
68	Cardozo	60	83	48	54	25	5	131	118	14	84	122	46	108	69.1
69	Seton Hall	92	89	65	59	68	68	71	11	74	80	122	50	64	70.2
70	Chicago-Kent	92	114	86	72	68	68	103	67	14	90	32	99	9	70.3
71	Suffolk	125	17	140	95	84	26	103	52	31	90	5	119	31	70.6
72	Northeastern*	140	22	86	144	61	68	94	9	36	67	21	91	80	70.7
73	BYU	17	133	48	38	68	50	71	118	74	58	122	31	96	71.1
74	Oregon	60	114	74	80	84	11	9	118	92	67	1	68	166	72.6
75	Syracuse*	100	106	79	95	61	68	80	67	67	90	42	81	15	73.2
76	Pittsburgh*	78	89	65	80	73	68	80	29	51	50	122	31	139	73.5
77	Santa Clara	74	89	107	80	84	68	94	113	4	42	52	74	96	75.2
78	South Carolina	60	25	97	80	73	68	71	79	123	127	122	50	15	76.2
79	Richmond	74	89	35	95	50	68	58	118	31	75	122	50	126	76.2
80	Indiana (McKinney)	92	106	97	87	84	68	103	20	92	67	16	74	108	78.0
81	Tennessee	36	22	57	47	94	68	103	61	117	175	46	81	108	78.1
82	Hofstra	78	89	86	109	73	50	138	83	81	103	42	74	22	79.1
83	Seattle*	92	25	107	95	50	68	61	103	92	75	8	91	166	79.5
84	George Mason	36	133	42	29	94	68	125	135	22	90	122	74	64	79.5
84	Michigan State	68	83	74	64	108	21	94	135	67	67	90	99	64	79.5
86	Drexel	92	51	97	121	94	68	157	29	92	84	25	119	15	80.3
87	Stetson	125	89	107	80	94	18	88	94	130	127	3	91	1	80.5
88	Lewis & Clark	125	51	79	109	73	68	2	135	88	75	16	119	108	80.6
89	St. John's*	87	106	65	64	84	50	131	113	92	90	25	109	37	81.0
90	New Mexico	100	17	86	87	94	68	26	83	130	116	52	90	126	82.7
91	Wayne State	100	69	97	80	73	68	94	46	130	53	122	81	80	84.1
92	Connecticut*	68	89	57	87	73	68	88	79	105	53	90	81	166	84.9
93	Kansas	78	106	65	72	108	26	44	135	105	84	68	91	139	86.2
94	St. Louis	125	69	79	72	94	68	145	1	81	119	68	74	139	87.2
95	Pacific	100	114	120	121	108	34	94	135	130	38	32	119	9	88.8
96	Baltimore	140	6	107	144	68	60	61	103	88	90	77	81	139	89.5
97	Illinois-Chicago	116	78	140	95	149	68	131	118	51	103	25	99	24	92.1
98	Pace	116	106	131	144	94	68	1	94	130	103	122	74	24	92.8
99	Missouri-Kansas City	87	114	120	95	94	68	118	94	105	127	13	119	59	93.3
100	Penn State-Dickinson*	87	78	115	87	108	68	61	52	92	80	122	109	158	93.6

If anyone at a law school outside the Top 100 would like the data for their school's rank, email me.

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panel

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panel at the 2023 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico:

Taxation of Labor and Business 

• Session Organizer: Neil Buchanan (Florida; Google Scholar) 
• Chair/Discussant: Orly Mazur (SMU; Google Scholar) 

The imposition of a tax has an impact on the social and economic responses of taxpayers, whether individuals or corporations. The papers in this session contemplate the effects of a variety of tax rules on the business decisions of workers and employers, and think through what improvements might be available as a matter of tax policy and tax design.

Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar), Taxing Innovation Inventiveness:

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ETS Reduces GRE From 4 Hours to 2 Hours (LSAT Is 3 Hours)

ETS Press Release, Shortened GRE Test Coming September 2023:

Today, ETS announced that beginning this September, the GRE General Test will take less than 2 hours to complete — roughly half the time of the current test. This makes the GRE General Test the shortest and most efficient test among top professional, business and law school admissions test options. The shorter GRE test will continue to provide test takers and institutions with the same valid and reliable scores they have always counted on from ETS. Registration for the shorter test is now open for test dates beginning September 22, 2023.

Changes to the test include:

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The Welfare Effects Of Nudges Versus Taxes

John A. List (Chicago; Google Scholar), Matthias Rodemeier (Bocconi; Google Scholar), Sutanuka Roy (Australian National; Google Scholar) & Gregory Sun (Chicago), Judging Nudging: Understanding the Welfare Effects of Nudges Versus Taxes:

While behavioral non-price interventions (“nudges”) have grown from academic curiosity to a bona fide policy tool, their relative economic efficiency remains under-researched. We develop a unified framework to estimate welfare effects of both nudges and taxes. We showcase our approach by creating a database of more than 300 carefully hand-coded point estimates of nonprice and price interventions in the markets for cigarettes, influenza vaccinations, and household energy. While nudges are effective in changing behavior in all three markets, they are not necessarily the most efficient policy. 

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Some Law Schools Already Are Using ChatGPT To Teach Legal Research And Writing

ABA Journal, Some Law Schools Already Are Using ChatGPT to Teach Legal Research and Writing:

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that can speak and write like humans, can be weak on facts. But it may already be a better wordsmith than some attorneys, says David Kemp, an adjunct professor at Rutgers Law School.

“If you’re asking it to organize several concepts or are struggling to explain something in a way that’s really understandable, it can help,” says Kemp, who also is the managing editor of Oyez, a multimedia website focused on U.S. Supreme Court opinions.

The technology seems to prefer active voice, as does Kemp. He introduced ChatGPT in an advanced legal writing class and plans to include it in a summer course about emerging technology.

Various law schools are following suit. Legal writing faculty interviewed by the ABA Journal agree that ChatGPT writing can model good sentence and paragraph structure. But some fear that it could detract from students learning good writing skills.

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Kemker: When Gender-Affirming Healthcare Becomes Illegal, Will It (Still) Be Tax-Deductible?

Diane Kemker (Southern, DePaul), When Gender-Affirming Healthcare Becomes Illegal, Will It (Still) Be Tax-Deductible?:

In the absence of universal health care, which itself exacts a deadly toll on Americans, all too many people face unmanageable medical costs. Even those with insurance may find themselves with large, uninsured expenses. The Internal Revenue Code acknowledges these realities by permitting taxpayers to take a deduction for unusually large medical expenses incurred in a taxable year, whether for the taxpayer or their dependents. Although the statutory provision that creates this deduction does not condition deductibility on the legality of the medical treatment, the Regulations do.

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Re-Evaluating GPT-4's Bar Exam Performance

Following up on my previous post, GPT-4 Beats 90% Of Aspiring Lawyers On The Bar Exam:  Eric Martínez (MIT; Google Scholar), Re-Evaluating GPT-4's Bar Exam Performance:

Perhaps the most widely touted of GPT-4's at-launch, zero-shot capabilities has been its reported 90th-percentile performance on the Uniform Bar Exam, with its reported 80-percentile-points boost over its predecessor, GPT-3.5, far exceeding that for any other exam. This paper investigates the methodological challenges in documenting and verifying the 90th-percentile claim, presenting four sets of findings that suggest that OpenAI's estimates of GPT-4's UBE percentile, though clearly an impressive leap over those of GPT-3.5, appear to be overinflated, particularly if taken as a “conservative” estimate representing “the lower range of percentiles,” and moreso if meant to reflect the actual capabilities of a practicing lawyer.

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Avi-Yonah: Should U.S. Tax Law Be Constitutionalized? Centennial Reflections On Eisner v. Macomber (1920)

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar), Should U.S. Tax Law Be Constitutionalized? Centennial Reflections on Eisner v. Macomber (1920), 16 Duke J. Const. L. & Pub. Pol'y 65 (2021)

The United States Supreme Court last decided a federal income tax case on constitutional grounds in 1920—a century ago. The case was Eisner v. Macomber, and the issue was whether Congress had the power under the Sixteenth Amendment to include stock dividends in the tax base. The Court answered “no” because “income” in the Sixteenth Amendment meant “the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined.” A stock dividend was not “income” because it did not increase the wealth of the shareholder.

Macomber was never formally overruled, and it is sometimes still cited by academics and practitioners for the proposition that the Constitution requires that income be “realized” to be subject to tax. 

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2024 U.S. News Trial Advocacy Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News Trial Advocacy Rankings include the trial advocacy programs at 196 law schools (the faculty survey had a 59% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.4	Stetson
2	4.3	Temple
3	4.2	Baylor
4	3.9	Samford
5	3.8	Loyola-L.A.
6	3.7	Denver
6	3.7	Fordham
6	3.7	UCLA*
9	3.6	Chicago-Kent
9	3.6	Pacific
9	3.6	South Texas*
12	3.5	St. Mary's
13	3.3	Georgia
13	3.3	Loyola-Chicago*
15	3.2	American*
15	3.2	Campbell*
15	3.2	Drexel
15	3.2	Mercer
15	3.2	South Carolina
15	3.2	Syracuse*
15	3.2	UC-Berkeley*
22	3.1	Georgetown*
22	3.1	Hofstra
24	3.0	Akron
24	3.0	Georgia State
24	3.0	Houston
24	3.0	Illinois-Chicago
24	3.0	Pace
24	3.0	UC-San Francisco*
24	3.0	Washington University
31	2.9	Northwestern*
31	2.9	Nova
31	2.9	Quinnipiac*
31	2.9	Suffolk
35	2.8	Emory
35	2.8	Louisiana State
37	2.7	Harvard*
37	2.7	St. John's*
37	2.7	Texas
40	2.6	Catholic
40	2.6	Howard
40	2.6	Inter-American (PR)*
40	2.6	Maryland*
40	2.6	Ohio State
40	2.6	Texas Tech
40	2.6	Wake Forest
47	2.5	Alabama
47	2.5	Brooklyn*
47	2.5	Case Western
47	2.5	George Washington
47	2.5	Notre Dame
47	2.5	Ohio Northern
47	2.5	San Diego
47	2.5	SMU
47	2.5	South Dakota
47	2.5	UC-Davis*
47	2.5	Villanova
47	2.5	William & Mary

*Denotes schools that boycotted the U.S. News rankings

2023 U.S. News Trial Advocacy Rankings

2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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Shaviro Posts Two Tax Papers On SSRN

Daniel Shaviro (NYU; Google Scholar) has posted two tax papers on SSRN:

Time Is, Time Was: Evaluating the Use of the Life Cycle Model as a Fiscal Policy Tool:

What time periods should we use in tax and other fiscal policy to evaluate people’s circumstances, and thus to determine either how they are being treated, or how they ought to be? This question is both fundamental and pervasive.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Gorsuch’s Title 42 Statement Is ‘A Remarkable Jeremiad Against Covid Mitigation Policies,’ Law Prof Says
• ABA Journal, Law School Clinics Tackle Challenging Issue of Heirs’ Property Rights
• ABA Journal, Proposal For Bar Exam Bypass Should Be Pursued Further, California Bar Trustees Say
• ABC News, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Tells Law Students 'Survivor' Offers Helpful Lessons
• Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Notre Dame Law Dean G. Marcus Cole Receives 2023 Legal Service Award
• CBS News, A Former Sanitation Worker Just Graduated From Harvard, But Doesn't Forget Where He Came From
• Delaware Law Weekly, Second Delaware Law School Set to Open This Fall
• Good Morning America, From Trials to Triumph: Rehan Staton's Journey From Sanitation Worker to Harvard Law Grad

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Avi-Yonah Posts Three International Tax Papers On SSRN

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) has posted three international tax papers on SSRN:

Unitary Taxation After Pillar One:

Pillar One of the G20/OECD/IF BEPS 2.0 effort is unlikely to succeed for three reasons. First, it requires a multilateral tax convention (MTC) to be implemented because Amount A requires overriding Articles 5 (Permanent Establishment, PE), 7 (Business Profits) and 9 (Associated Enterprises) of every tax treaty to abolish the PE and Arm’s Length Principle (ALP) limits enshrined therein. 

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NY Times: Here’s What Happens When A Lawyer Uses ChatGPT

New York Times, Here’s What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT:

The lawsuit began like so many others: A man named Roberto Mata sued the airline Avianca, saying he was injured when a metal serving cart struck his knee during a flight to Kennedy International Airport in New York.

When Avianca asked a Manhattan federal judge to toss out the case, Mr. Mata’s lawyers vehemently objected, submitting a 10-page brief that cited more than half a dozen relevant court decisions. There was Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines and, of course, Varghese v. China Southern Airlines, with its learned discussion of federal law and “the tolling effect of the automatic stay on a statute of limitations.”

There was just one hitch: No one — not the airline’s lawyers, not even the judge himself — could find the decisions or the quotations cited and summarized in the brief.

That was because ChatGPT had invented everything.

The lawyer who created the brief, Steven A. Schwartz of the firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, threw himself on the mercy of the court on Thursday, saying in an affidavit that he had used the artificial intelligence program to do his legal research — “a source that has revealed itself to be unreliable.”

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Lesson From The Tax Court: Substantiating Gambling Losses On Per-Casino Basis

The old saying “you win some, you lose some” is not true for most recreational gamblers.  For them, the saying is more like “you win some, you lose more.”  But proving that proves a problem.  In Jacob Bright v. Commissioner, Docket No. 10095-22 (May 4, 2023), Judge Buch teaches us how taxpayers can use their player cards to substantiate their wagering losses.  There, Mr. Bright reported some $241,000 of wagering gains on his 2019 return, and an equal amount of losses.  However, he apparently did not follow best practices—as very nicely explained in this article—of keeping daily contemporaneous records.  When audited, the IRS accepted his self-reported income (natch!) but disallowed all the losses for lack of substantiation (double natch!).

In Tax Court, Judge Buch allowed Mr. Bright to introduce reports of his player card activity, from each of the three Casinos he gambled at in 2019.  That created a sufficient basis for the Court to use the Cohan rule, albeit differently for each Casino.  The Court used this method to estimate $191,000 of losses.  In taking this approach for calculating wagering losses, Judge Buch gives us a new idea of “per session” netting worth considering, not only for proving up wagering losses, but also for calculating wagering gains.  I would call it a “per establishment” approach.  It makes a good bit of sense.  Details below the fold.

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