This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education:

1. Law.com, Tenured Law Professor Pulled From His Classroom Faces Termination. He Wants To Know Why?
2. Derek Muller (Iowa), How Law Faculty Succeeded In Diminishing Their Importance In The U.S. News Rankings
3. Markus Funk (Colorado), Andrew Boutros (Chicago) & Eugene Volokh (UCLA), Time For Law Schools To Rethink Unsung Role Of Adjuncts
4. Stephanie Hunter McMahon (Cincinnati), What Law Schools Must Change To Train Transactional Lawyers
5. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Preview Of The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Admissions
6. Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (Jay Mitchell, Alabama Supreme Court), The New Bar Exam Puts DEI Over Competence
7. Donald Tobin (Maryland), A Preliminary Analysis of the New 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
8. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Projected 2025 U.S. News Law School Rankings: The Biggest Winners And Losers
9. Prentiss Cox (Minnesota), 1L Curricula in the United States: 2023 Data and Historical Comparison
10. U.S. News & World Report 2024 Specialty Rankings:

• Dispute Resolution Rankings
• Environmental Law Rankings
• Health Care Law Rankings
• Intellectual Property Law Rankings
• International Law Rankings

Tax:

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: On Time Is Late
2. The Legal Watchdog, How The Accounting Profession Wrecked Itself And Made A Legal Career Preferable To A CPA
3. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Allocating Between Excludable Child Support and Includable Interest
4. Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan) & Yoseph Edrey (Haifa University), Constitutional Review Of Federal Tax Legislation
5. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Exclusion Rules For Disability Payments
6. U.S. News & World Report, 2024 Tax Rankings
7. San Diego Conference, Tax Profs Tenured 1-15 Years 
8. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
9. Sloan Speck (Colorado), Review Of A Critical Evaluation Of The Qualified Small Business Stock Exclusion, By Gregg Polsky (Georgia) & Ethan Yale (Virginia)
10. Roundup, Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

Faith: 

1. The Life, Death, And Legacy Of Tim Keller
2. Tim Keller: Growing My Faith In The Face Of Death

Duquesne, FIU, Kansas, Oklahoma, And Texas A&M Are Among The Biggest U.S. News Law School Rankings Winners

Following up on my previous post, The Law Schools Most Impacted By The Methodology Changes In The 2024 U.S. News Rankings:  Law.com, Ahead of the Curve: Some Law Schools Are Happy About the US News Rankings:

In last week’s column, I questioned whether the 63 schools that boycotted the Best Law Schools list, along with the massive amount of unflattering press those moves garnered for U.S. News, would put a dent in the rankings’ reputation.

This week, though, I want to look at some of the institutions that performed particularly well in the rankings, which were finally released on May 11, and show that not every law school is unhappy with U.S. News.

Texas A&M University School of Law, for example, now ranks 29th nationally—tied with Boston College Law School and Fordham Law School—one of the fastest and furthest increases in U.S. News law school rankings history, according to an announcement put out by the school. The school rose 17 spots from No. 46 last year. The previous year, it had been tied for No. 53.

This year, 15 law schools increased by 20 or more spots as compared to last year’s rankings. and among the top 50, the University of Kansas School of Law rose to tied at 40th up from tied at 67th last year.

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Innovation Funding And The Valley Of Death

Lital Helman (Ono Academic College), Innovation Funding and the Valley of Death, 76 S.M.U. L. Rev. __ (2023):

Innovation is a public good. As with other public goods, it is expected to be under-produced if only private incentives are present. Therefore, the law strives to encourage innovation via an array of stimuli mechanisms. The law offers three main such mechanisms: intellectual property (IP), cash transfers—mainly prizes and grants, and tax incentives.

Vast literature analyzes and compares these innovation stimuli in search for the optimal mix to boost innovation. Yet a key problem is largely overlooked: taken together, the existing stimuli do not cover the lion’s share of the innovation lifecycle. At the beginning of the innovation process, companies can win grants or prizes to cover research & development (R&D) expenses. When the company is already selling, it can enjoy IP payoffs and tax credits. In between, no targeted stimuli exist. This is an incongruity, because most innovative endeavors struggle neither in the R&D phase nor at the sales stage. In particular, for startups in the high-tech sector, it is precisely the phases between R&D and sales that prove fatal. This phenomenon is so well-known that the market has created a nickname for it—“the valley of death.”

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Applying Universal Design In The Legal Academy

Matthew L. Timko (Northern Illinois), Applying Universal Design in the Legal Academy, 114 Law Libr. J. 343 (2022):

Too often barriers to access in the form of physical, technological, and cognitive environments play a large role in keeping many people out of law school. While federal and state laws address these barriers, universal design provides the clearest policy change for law schools to remedy these issues.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Speck Reviews A Critical Evaluation Of The Qualified Small Business Stock Exclusion By Polsky & Yale

This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Gregg D. Polsky (Georgia; Google Scholar) & Ethan Yale (Virginia; Google Scholar), A Critical Evaluation of the Qualified Small Business Stock Exclusion, 42 Va. Tax Rev. 353 (2023).

After 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, some commentators predicted a renaissance in taxpayers’ use of the statutory exclusion for gain from qualified small business stock under § 1202. In 2015, Congress made permanent the provision’s 100 percent exclusion that emerged in the wake of the Great Recession, and the TCJA’s fourteen-point reduction in corporate rates heralded new benefits to bucking longstanding conventional wisdom that taxpayers should operate nonpublic companies as passthroughs. These predictions didn’t really come to pass, as Polsky and Yale observe in their magisterial exegesis of § 1202, A Critical Evaluation of the Qualified Small Business Stock Exclusion. 

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• 2024 U.S. News Dispute Resolution Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Environmental Law Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Health Care Law Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Intellectual Property Law Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News International Law Rankings
• Prentiss Cox (Minnesota), 1L Curricula in the United States: 2023 Data and Historical Comparison
• Daniel Judge (Notre Dame), Catholic Legal Education and the Formation of Conscience
• Law360 Op-Ed (Markus Funk (Partner, Perkins Coie; Adjunct Professor, Colorado), Andrew Boutros (Dechert; Lecturer, Chicago) & Eugene Volokh (Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA)), Time For Law Schools To Rethink Unsung Role Of Adjuncts
• Law.com, Ohio Northern U Is Seeking the Dismissal of a Tenured Law Professor. He Alleges It's Because of His Views on DEI

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Biden Pressed to Limit Hydrogen Credits Key to New Industry
• Bloomberg, Flight of Affluent Taxpayers Catches Up With New York
• Bloomberg, IRS's $80 Billion Budget Boost Targeted for Cuts in Debt Talks
• Common Dreams, 'We Are Not Taxing the Very Wealthy Enough': Runaway Inequality About to Get Worse
• Financial Times, IRS Sets Its Sights on Tax Avoidance by the Super-Rich and Corporations

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2024 U.S. News International Law Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News International Law Rankings include the international law programs at 174 law schools (the faculty survey had a 53% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.6	NYU*
2	4.4	Columbia*
3	4.3	Harvard*
3	4.3	Yale*
5	4.2	American*
5	4.2	Georgetown*
7	4.1	George Washington
7	4.1	UC-Berkeley*
9	4.0	Chicago
10	3.9	Case Western
10	3.9	Michigan*
10	3.9	Stanford*
10	3.9	Temple
10	3.9	Virginia*
15	3.8	Cornell*
15	3.8	Georgia
15	3.8	UCLA*
18	3.6	Duke*
18	3.6	Fordham
18	3.6	Northwestern*
18	3.6	Penn*
18	3.6	Vanderbilt*
23	3.5	Minnesota
23	3.5	UC-Davis*
25	3.4	Arizona State
25	3.4	Boston University
25	3.4	Indiana (Maurer)
25	3.4	Miami
25	3.4	Notre Dame
25	3.4	Texas
25	3.4	UC-Irvine*
25	3.4	UC-San Francisco*
25	3.4	Washington University
25	3.4	William & Mary
35	3.3	Denver
35	3.3	Tulane*
35	3.3	Utah
38	3.2	Boston College
38	3.2	Emory
38	3.2	Pacific
38	3.2	University of Arizona
42	3.1	Florida Int'l
42	3.1	Santa Clara
42	3.1	SMU
42	3.1	Washington & Lee
42	3.1	Wisconsin*
47	3.0	Brooklyn*
47	3.0	Maryland*
47	3.0	University of Washington*
50	2.9	Hawaii
50	2.9	Howard
50	2.9	Pittsburgh*

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

2023 U.S. News International Law Rankings

2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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8th Annual Texas Tax Faculty Workshop

Houston hosted the 8th Annual Texas Tax Faculty Workshop (program):

Johnny Buckles (Houston), Constitutional Law and Tax Expenditures: A Prelude, 76 Ark. L. Rev. 1 (2023)
Commenter: Susan Morse (Texas; Google Scholar)

Orly Mazur (SMU; Google Scholar), Cooperative Federalism and the Digital Tax Impasse, 51 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. __ (2023) (with Adam B. Thimmesch (Nebraska; Google Scholar))
Commenter: Khrista McCarden (Tulane)

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NCBE Publishes Content Scope For NextGen Bar Exam

NCBE Publishes Content Scope for NextGen Bar Exam:

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), which develops bar exam content for 54 US jurisdictions, has published the content scope for the NextGen bar exam, which is set to launch in 2026. The content scope document outlines the breadth of material to be covered on the new exam in eight areas of legal knowledge and seven categories of practical skills and abilities.

The publication of the content scope marks the latest milestone in the development of the new bar exam, which will be focused on testing a wider array of foundational lawyering skills in the context of substantive legal knowledge currently tested on the bar exam. In addition to traditional multiple-choice questions and longer written analyses, the exam is expected to include new integrated sets of questions—combinations of short-answer and multiple-choice questions in scenarios involving complex legal issues, drawn from multiple subject areas, that require applicants to demonstrate both in-depth knowledge of the law and skill in a range of essential attorney functions. ...

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The Inflation Reduction Act's Impact On Tax Compliance—And Fiscal Sustainability

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), The Inflation Reduction Act's Impact on Tax Compliance—and Fiscal Sustainability:

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes a once-in-a-generation investment in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to modernize America’s tax administration and, by doing so, meaningfully increase compliance with the nation’s tax laws. We consider the impact of this investment on new tax revenue that the agency will be able to collect. Our rough estimate suggests that IRS funding will raise at least $560 billion ($480 billion, net) over the course of the next ten years—and, depending on the extent of taxpayer’s behavioral response to greater enforcement presence, could easily raise closer to $1 trillion. This is much larger than official government estimates.

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GPT-4’s Law School Grades: Con Law C, Crim C-, Law & Econ C, Partnership Tax B, Property B-, Tax B

Andrew Blair-Stanek (Maryland; Google Scholar), Anne-Marie Carstens (Maryland), Daniel S. Goldberg (Maryland), Mark Graber (Maryland), David C. Gray (Maryland) & Maxwell L. Stearns (Maryland; Google Scholar), GPT-4’s Law School Grades: Con Law C, Crim C-, Law & Econ C, Partnership Tax B, Property B-, Tax B:

GPT-4 performs vastly better than ChatGPT or GPT-3.5 on legal tasks like the bar exam and statutory reasoning. To test GPT-4’s abilities, we ran it on our final exams this semester and graded its output alongside students’ exams. We found that it produced smoothly written answers that failed to spot many important issues, much like a bright student who had neither attended class often, nor thought deeply about the material. It uniformly performed below average—in every course. We provide observations that may help law professors detect students who cheat on exams using GPT-4.

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Clausing: The International Tax Agreement Of 2021—Why It's Needed, What It Does, And What Comes Next?

Kimberly A. Clausing (UCLA; Google Scholar), The International Tax Agreement of 2021: Why It's Needed, What it Does, and What Comes Next?:

In 2021, more than 135 jurisdictions agreed on transformative new international tax rules that would establish a minimum tax rate of 15 percent on multinational corporate income regardless of where it was reported. In December 2022, the European Union unanimously moved forward to implement this minimum tax, and other countries, including South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, are also either implementing the tax or taking substantial steps toward implementation.

In tandem, the United States should also reform its international tax system and adopt a stronger minimum tax. While the future of the international agreement is uncertain, it has important implications for the ability of governments worldwide to create tax systems that are administrable, fair, and efficient.

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Tenured Law Professor Pulled From His Classroom Faces Termination. He Wants To Know Why?

Following up on my previous post, WSJ Op-Ed: DEI Brings Kafka To My Law School:  Law.com, Ohio Northern U Is Seeking the Dismissal of a Tenured Law Professor. He Alleges It's Because of His Views on DEI.:

Scott Gerber, a law professor at the Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law, was pulled from his classroom last month, banned from campus and allegedly forced to sign a separation agreement—and he says he doesn’t know why. Now the school is seeking his dismissal.

“Ohio Northern University is trying to banish me for lack of ‘collegiality’ but won’t say what I’ve done,” Gerber wrote in an op-ed published on May 9 in the Wall Street Journal.

Gerber, who has taught at ONU Law since 2001, said he suspects the school’s investigation into him is related to his public opinions regarding the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, he said in the op-ed piece. ...

“We are following our faculty-driven process for the dismissal of a tenured faculty member for cause,” Dave Kielmeyer, executive director of communications and marketing at the school, told Law.com in an email Wednesday.

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SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly ranking of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database.  Here is the new list (through May 1, 2023) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

		All-Time			Recent
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	220,463	1	Jonathan Choi (Minnesota)	13,150
2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	129,887	2	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	11,859
3	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	126,539	3	Kristin Hickman (Minnesota)	10,601
4	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	126,365	4	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	9,666
5	David Gamage (Indiana-Maurer)	124,060	5	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	4,465
6	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	117,196	6	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	4,090
7	David Kamin (NYU)	113,586	7	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	3,333
8	Cliff Fleming (BYU)	107,956	8	Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-McKinney)	3,073
9	Manoj Viswanathan (UC-San Francisco)	104,514	9	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	3,034
10	Ari Glogower (Northwestern)	103,801	10	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	3,014
11	Rebecca Kysar (Fordham)	103,614	11	D. Dharmapala (Chicago)	2,892
12	D. Dharmapala (Chicago)	50,137	12	Kyle Rozema (Washington University)	2,870
13	Michael Simkovic (USC)	47,611	13	Richard Ainsworth (Boston University)	2,545
14	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	40,941	14	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	2,544
15	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	39,839	15	David Gamage (Indiana-Maurer)	2,441
16	Richard Ainsworth (Boston University)	37,513	16	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	2,427
17	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	35,907	17	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	2,266
18	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	31,977	18	Zachary Liscow (Yale)	2,260
19	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	30,229	19	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	2,065
20	Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)	29,751	20	Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo)	2,044
21	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	29,608	21	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	2,017
22	Ed Kleinbard (USC)	29,359	22	Richard Kaplan (Illinois)	1,887
23	Jim Hines (Michigan)	27,844	23	Brian Galle (Georgetown)	1,780
24	Richard Kaplan (Illinois)	27,059	24	Victoria Haneman (Creighton)	1,727
25	Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)	26,221	25	David Kamin (NYU)	1,670

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2024 U.S. News Intellectual Property Law Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News Intellectual Property Law Rankings include the intellectual property law programs at 196 law schools (the faculty survey had a 57% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.8	Stanford*
1	4.8	UC-Berkeley*
3	4.4	NYU*
4	4.1	George Washington
4	4.1	Santa Clara
6	3.8	Houston
7	3.7	American*
7	3.7	Georgetown*
9	3.6	Boston University
9	3.6	Duke*
9	3.6	Texas A&M
9	3.6	UC-Irvine*
9	3.6	UCLA*
14	3.5	Cardozo
14	3.5	Chicago-Kent
14	3.5	Michigan*
14	3.5	Penn*
18	3.4	Texas
19	3.3	Columbia*
19	3.3	Harvard*
19	3.3	New Hampshire*
22	3.2	Fordham
22	3.2	George Mason
22	3.2	Northwestern*
22	3.2	San Diego
22	3.2	UC-Davis*
22	3.2	Virginia*
28	3.1	Cornell*
28	3.1	University of Washington*
28	3.1	Vanderbilt*
31	3.0	Emory
31	3.0	Richmond
31	3.0	Suffolk
31	3.0	UC-San Francisco*
31	3.0	Utah
36	2.9	Chicago
36	2.9	Colorado
36	2.9	DePaul
36	2.9	Indiana (Maurer)
36	2.9	Northeastern*
36	2.9	Washington University
42	2.8	Boston College
42	2.8	Georgia State
42	2.8	Minnesota
42	2.8	USC
46	2.7	Arizona State
46	2.7	Maryland*
46	2.7	Temple
46	2.7	William & Mary
46	2.7	Yale*

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

2023 U.S. News Intellectual Property Law Rankings

2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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Conference For Tax Profs Tenured 1-15 Years At San Diego

San Diego hosted a combined AMT (Association of Mid-Level Tax Scholars Conference, for those tenured for 1-10 years) and EITC (Experienced in Tax Conference, for those tenured for 11-15 years) earlier this week:

Panel #1:

Ari Glogower (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Restoring Substance to the Taxing Power
Discussant: Omri Marian (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar)

Jake Brooks (Fordham; Google Scholar), The Constitutional Meaning of “Income”: Moore v. United States and the Movement to Revive Eisner v. Macomber
Discussant: Michael Doran (Virginia; Google Scholar)

Brian Galle (Georgetown; Google Scholar), Unreserved: Central Banks Have Powerful New Tools for Controlling the Economy but They’re Still Playing by the Old Rules
Discussant: Steven Dean (Brooklyn)

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1L Curricula In The United States: 2023 Data And Historical Comparison

Prentiss Cox (Minnesota; Google Scholar), 1L Curricula in the United States: 2023 Data and Historical Comparison:

This article reports on a survey of the first year (1L) curricula at U. S. law schools. We were able to obtain data on the 1L course requirements, including credits for each course, at 191 of 196 ABA-accredited law schools. We compared this data to six other surveys of 1L curricula from 1919 to 2010. Important findings include the following: [1] credits for four almost universally required “Big 4” 1L courses (contracts, torts, property and civil procedure) continue a fifty year decline; [2] credits for legal research and writing continue to increase, so that legal writing is now the highest- credit course across 1L curricula 

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Tax Papers At Junior Faculty Forum At Richmond

Tax presentations at this week's Junior Faculty Forum at Richmond (program):

Assaf Harpaz (Drexel; Google Scholar), International Tax Reform: Challenges to Multilateral Cooperation, 44 U. Pa. J. Int'l L. __ (2023):

In 2021, the OECD proposed new rules for the cross-border taxation of multinational corporations. The proposed rules set forth the most significant reform to international tax rules in several decades. They follow approximately a decade of multilateral negotiation led by the OECD and drafted by a broader Inclusive Framework of over 140 countries. The goal of this Article is to highlight the importance of multilateral cooperation and illuminate the obstacles to implementing international tax reform. It argues that the new international tax framework requires unprecedented multilateral cooperation to reallocate taxing rights and limit profit shifting. But such ambitious cooperation may be more than countries can accomplish. The new rules are largely an outcome of political compromises rather than a principled approach to tax policy. They infringe on tax sovereignty, limit tax competition, and undermine the economic interests of the world’s developing countries.

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WSJ Op-Ed: The New NextGen Bar Exam Puts DEI Over Competence

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  The New Bar Exam Puts DEI Over Competence, by Jay Mitchell (Justice, Alabama Supreme Court):

The bar exam is about to get a nationwide overhaul. The National Conference of Bar Examiners, or NCBE, which creates and administers the uniform bar exam, plans to roll out a revamped version of the bar exam, which it calls the “NextGen” exam, in 2026. After attending the NCBE’s annual meeting this month, I have serious concerns about how this test will affect law students, law schools and the legal profession. ...

[P]erhaps the biggest concern is the NCBE’s use of the NextGen exam to advance its “diversity, fairness and inclusion” agenda. Two of the organization’s stated aims are to “work toward greater equity” by “eliminat[ing] any aspects of our exams that could contribute to performance disparities” and to “promote greater diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.” The NCBE reinforces this message by touting its “organization-wide efforts to ensure that diversity, fairness, and inclusion pervade its test products and services.”

What does all this mean—and how does it have any relation to the law? Based on the diversity workshop at the NCBE conference, it means putting considerable emphasis on examinees’ race, sex, gender identity, nationality and other identity-based characteristics. The idea seems to be that any differences in group outcomes must be eliminated—even if the only way to achieve this goal is to water down the test. On top of all that, an American Civil Liberties Union representative provided conference attendees with a lecture on criminal-justice reform in which he argued that states should minimize or overlook would-be lawyers’ convictions for various criminal offenses in deciding whether to admit them to the bar.

None of this is encouraging. It shouldn’t matter who you are or where you come from—if you can demonstrate minimal competency on the bar exam and meet a state’s character-and-fitness requirements, you should be allowed to practice law. If you can’t, you shouldn’t be given a license to handle the legal affairs of others. The bar exam should test the law straight—without respect to ideology and on a race- and sex-blind basis.

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Discourses In The Tampon Tax Campaign

Shu-Chien Chen (Erasmus), Discourses in the Tampon Tax Campaign, 17 Analize: J. Gender & Feminist Stud. 114 (2022):

The Tampon Tax Campaign is a global social movement that aims to abolish consumption tax on menstruation hygienic products and provide free universal access to them as the ultimate goal. In the campaign, there are different discourses supporting abolishing the tampon tax and discourses casting doubts on the campaign. Discourses supporting the campaign center around breaking the menstruation taboo, including eradicating menstruation poverty, ensuring menstruation health, pursuing human rights, and ending tax discrimination. Doubt-casting discourses include the revenue reduction and economics inefficiency in the market after abolishing tax on menstruation hygienic products. These doubt-casting discourses talk about money. I will use Foucault’s discourse analysis approach, not only to analyze discussions from scholars, but also to compare legislation records of Australia, California and Scotland between 2017 and 2020 that are in response to the tampon tax campaign. 

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2024 U.S. News Health Care Law Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News Health Care Law Rankings include the health care law programs at 189 law schools (the faculty survey had a 52% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.3	Boston University
1	4.3	Georgia State
1	4.3	St. Louis
4	4.1	Loyola-Chicago*
5	4.0	Stanford*
6	3.9	Georgetown*
6	3.9	Harvard*
6	3.9	Maryland*
9	3.8	Houston
9	3.8	Northeastern*
11	3.7	Case Western
11	3.7	Seton Hall
11	3.7	UC-San Francisco*
14	3.6	Arizona State
15	3.5	Ohio State
15	3.5	Yale*
17	3.3	Michigan*
17	3.3	Temple
19	3.2	UCLA*
20	3.1	American*
20	3.1	George Washington
20	3.1	Indiana (McKinney)
20	3.1	Penn*
20	3.1	Wake Forest
25	3.0	Utah
26	2.9	Minnesota
26	2.9	Mitchell | Hamline*
26	2.9	Washington University
29	2.8	Drexel
29	2.8	Duke*
29	2.8	Emory
29	2.8	Pittsburgh*
29	2.8	SMU
29	2.8	University of Arizona
35	2.7	DePaul
35	2.7	North Carolina
35	2.7	Nova
35	2.7	UC-Irvine*
39	2.6	UC-Berkeley*
39	2.6	UC-Davis*
41	2.5	Boston College
41	2.5	Georgia
41	2.5	Northwestern*
41	2.5	Rutgers*
41	2.5	UNLV
46	2.4	Florida
46	2.4	Indiana (Maurer)
46	2.4	Texas
46	2.4	Vanderbilt*
46	2.4	Virginia*
46	2.4	Wayne State

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

2023 U.S. News Health Care Law Rankings

2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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Taxing Creativity

Xuan-Thao Nguyen (Washington) & Jeffrey A. Maine (Maine), Taxing Creativity, 89 Tenn. L. Rev. 523 (2022):

The recent sell offs of song catalogs by Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Neil Young, and Mick Fleetwood for extraordinarily large sums of money raise questions about the law on creativity. While patent and copyright laws encourage a wide array of creative endeavors, tax laws governing monetization of creative works do not. 

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What Law Schools Must Change To Train Transactional Lawyers

Stephanie Hunter McMahon (Cincinnati), What Law Schools Must Change to Train Transactional Lawyers, 43 Pace L. Rev. 106 (2022):

Not all lawyers litigate, but you would not know that from the first-year curriculum at most law schools. Despite 50% of lawyers working in transactional practices, schools do not incorporate its legal doctrines or skills in the foundational first year. That the Progressives pushed through antitrust laws and the New Dealers founded the modern administrative state reframed how people use the law, particularly in transactional practices, and should be given equal weight as the appellate-based common law in any legal introduction. Nevertheless, the law school model created by Christopher Columbus Langdell in the 1870s remains dominant. As this review of fifty-four law schools’ required curricula shows, law schools have largely retained Langdell’s curriculum. This negatively affects young transactional lawyers because their critical first year does not show them the law as a preventative, problem-solving practice. 

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Roberts: A Man For His Era And For Ours—Cordell Hull, Father Of The Federal Income Tax

Tracey M. Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar), A Man for His Era and for Ours: Cordell Hull, Father of the Federal Income Tax, 53 Cumb. L. Rev. __ (2023):

An 1891 graduate of Cumberland School of Law, Cordell Hull served our country in countless ways. He worked as captain of the Fourth Regiment of the Tennessee Volunteer Infantry in the Spanish-American War, as judge for the fifth judicial circuit of Tennessee, as state representative in the Tennessee House of Representatives, as a member of the United States House of Representatives, as a member of the United States Senate, and as United States Secretary of State. President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to him as the “Father of the United Nations.” Hull subsequently received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 in honor of his work to establish that body. Hull is less well known for his work to establish another important and enduring institution—the federal income tax.

In his 1948 memoir, Hull wrote that he doubted that he would be able to render public service equal to his work to establish the income tax system even if he had two lifetimes. This essay explains why Hull regarded the federal income tax as among his chief contributions. First, it outlines Hull’s personal history, his experiences with his mentor, United States Representative Benton McMillin, and Hull’s efforts to pass the Revenue Act of 1913. Second, it discusses the historical, economic, and political context that motivated Hull to introduce the tax reform that not only sustained the United States through the two world wars that followed but made possible widespread economic prosperity in the twentieth century.

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2024 U.S. News Environmental Law Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News Environmental Law Rankings include the environmental law programs at 195 law schools (the faculty survey had a 59% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.6	Pace
2	4.5	Lewis & Clark
3	4.4	UC-Berkeley*
4	4.3	NYU*
4	4.3	UCLA*
4	4.3	Vermont
7	4.1	Columbia*
7	4.1	Vanderbilt*
9	4.0	Harvard*
9	4.0	Oregon
9	4.0	Stanford*
12	3.9	George Washington
12	3.9	Georgetown*
12	3.9	Utah
15	3.8	Colorado
15	3.8	Duke*
17	3.7	UC-Davis*
18	3.6	UC-San Francisco*
19	3.5	Arizona State
19	3.5	Denver
19	3.5	Florida
19	3.5	Florida State
19	3.5	Maryland*
19	3.5	University of Washington*
19	3.5	USC
26	3.4	Hawaii
26	3.4	Houston
26	3.4	New Mexico
26	3.4	Tulane*
26	3.4	Virginia*
26	3.4	Yale*
32	3.3	Indiana (Maurer)
32	3.3	Minnesota
32	3.3	North Carolina
32	3.3	Texas A&M
32	3.3	UC-Irvine*
37	3.2	Michigan*
37	3.2	Montana
39	3.1	Miami
39	3.1	Texas
39	3.1	University of Arizona
42	3.0	Ohio State
42	3.0	Penn*
44	2.9	American*
44	2.9	Boston College
44	2.9	Case Western
44	2.9	CUNY
44	2.9	Kansas
44	2.9	Loyola-New Orleans*
44	2.9	Northwestern*
44	2.9	Widener (DE)
44	2.9	William & Mary
44	2.9	Wisconsin*
44	2.9	Wyoming

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

2023 U.S. News Environmental Law Rankings

2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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Betwixt And Between: A Tax Lawyer’s Dual Responsibility

Rashaud J. Hannah (J.D. 2024), Note, Betwixt and Between: A Tax Lawyer's Dual Responsibility, 34 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 991 (2021): 

Lawyers are expected to zealously advocate for their clients in balance with their “honest dealings with others.” In exploring how tax lawyers may be well positioned to bridge the ideological divide between the U.S. government and corporations, this Note presents several perspectives. It identifies some of the relevant Model Rules, provides a brief history of the corporate tax and the federal income tax more generally, flags crisis as a recurring phenomenon and considered the U.S. government response, reviews literature on tax avoidance, and considers some cooperative strategies and feasible alternatives to the corporate tax policy status quo between the U.S. government and corporations. 

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Law School Entry-Level Faculty Hiring Is Flat; FAR Applicants Are Down 17% (68% From 2011)

Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar), Lawsky Entry Level Hiring Report 2023:

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Avi-Yonah & Edrey: Constitutional Review Of Federal Tax Legislation

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Yoseph M. Edrey (Haifa University), Constitutional Review of Federal Tax Legislation, 2023 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1: 

What does the Constitution mean when it says that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” (U.S. Const. Article I, Section 8, Clause 1)?

The definition of “tax” for constitutional purposes has become important considering the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (“NFIB”), in which Chief Justice Roberts for the Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) under the taxing power. This holding has resulted in commentators questioning the utility of Roberts’s distinction between a “tax,” where Congress’s power is nearly unlimited, and a “regulation,” where Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause is limited.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Breyer Shares Views On Treatment Of Female Classmates At Harvard During Law School Talk
• ABA Journal, Gender, Race And Finances For Law School Admittees Examined In New Report
• ABA Journal, Law School Introduces Hologram Witnesses In Mock Trial
• ABA Journal, Law Schools Should Take On Students’ Mental Health And Substance Use From Day One
• ABA  Journal, Program Rolls Out Next Generation Of Civil Rights Attorneys
• ABA Journal, Retired State Supreme Court Justice Tapped To Lead Law School
• BC Law, Law Student Runs for Mayor
• Concord Monitor, UNH Law School Said ‘No Thanks’ to US News Rankings but the Magazine Ranked Them Anyway

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How The Accounting Profession Wrecked Itself And Made A Legal Career Preferable To A CPA

The Legal Watchdog, Accounting: How to Wreck (and Rescue) a Profession:

In my earlier life, becoming a CPA was, in a sense, easy.  To be sure, the two-day exam itself was very tough.  Unlike state bar exams which sometimes have an 80% first-time pass rate, the November 1996 CPA exam, for example, had a 17% pass rate for first-time test takers.  But the process of becoming a CPA was very simple.  Just get a B.S. or B.B.A. in accounting, sign up for and pass the CPA exam, and then wait for your certificate to arrive in the U.S. mail. ...

Today, there are many articles about the declining number of CPAs and, especially, of accounting majors in the CPA pipeline.  The latest such article is here, in today’s WSJ (subscription required).  That article’s title indicates its proposed solution to the problem: How can we make accounting cool?  And there are many articles like this one, angsting about how to replenish the numbers within the profession.  But I doubt people are now avoiding accounting because it’s un-cool.  It has always been un-cool (which, in some circles, can be cool).

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2024 U.S. News Dispute Resolution Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News Dispute Resolution Rankings include the dispute resolution programs at 67 law schools (the faculty survey had a 56% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.5	Harvard*
2	4.4	Ohio State
2	4.4	Pepperdine Caruso
4	4.3	Missouri (Columbia)
5	4.2	Cardozo
5	4.2	Mitchell | Hamline*
7	4.0	Northwestern*
7	4.0	Texas A&M
9	3.9	Maryland*
9	3.9	UNLV
11	3.8	Oregon
11	3.8	Stanford*
11	3.8	UC-San Francisco*
14	3.7	Arizona State
15	3.6	Fordham
16	3.5	Creighton*
16	3.5	Texas
18	3.4	Florida
18	3.4	Stetson
18	3.4	Washington University
21	3.3	Georgetown*
21	3.3	Michigan State
21	3.3	Quinnipiac*
21	3.3	South Texas*
21	3.3	Virginia*
26	3.2	Columbia*
26	3.2	Kansas
26	3.2	Suffolk
29	3.1	Cornell*
29	3.1	NYU*
29	3.1	UC-Berkeley*
32	3.0	Marquette
32	3.0	UC-Davis*
34	2.9	Duke*
34	2.9	George Washington
34	2.9	Michigan*
34	2.9	Pacific
34	2.9	Penn*
34	2.9	UCLA*
34	2.9	University of Arizona
34	2.9	Vanderbilt*
34	2.9	Yale*
43	2.8	Denver
43	2.8	Illinois
43	2.8	Loyola-Chicago*
43	2.8	Nebraska*
43	2.8	Tulane*
43	2.8	UC-Irvine*
43	2.8	University of Washington*
50	2.7	Arkansas-Little Rock
50	2.7	BYU
50	2.7	Emory
50	2.7	Georgia
50	2.7	Hofstra
50	2.7	Miami
50	2.7	SMU
50	2.7	Southwestern*
50	2.7	St. John's*
50	2.7	Texas Tech

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

2023 U.S. News Dispute Resolution Rankings

2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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Lesson From The Tax Court: On Time Is Late

In law, even more than in comedy, timing can be critical.  In comedy you just lose a laugh.  In law, you lose a case.  In Roy A. Nutt and Bonnie W. Nutt v. Commissioner, 160 T.C. No. 10 (May 2, 2023) (Judge Buch), we learn why a petition seemingly submitted on time will be rejected as late.  There, the Nutts electronically submitted their Petition to the Tax Court on the last day they could file.  Now we all know you really don't want to ever do that.  But sometimes it just happens.  And the last day to file is just as timely as the first day to file.  The Nutts submitted their Petition at 11:05 p.m.  So they seemed to be on time.

The problem was that they were filing from Alabama (Central Time) and the Tax Court’s Clerk’s office is in Washington D.C. (Eastern Time).  Thus, even though they submitted on time, Judge Buch holds that their Petition was filed late, because 11:05 p.m. in Alabama was five minutes after midnight in Washington D.C.  Thus, sticking to its increasingly archaic view that the timing rules for filing a Petition are jurisdictional, the Tax Court dismissed the Petition.

Note this is another precedential opinion issued in a case with unrepresented taxpayers.  Here, the IRS moved to dismiss and briefed the issue, but there was no responding brief to counter the government’s view.  These pro-se taxpayers probably did not know about all the Tax Court precedent applying equitable principles to rescue seemingly late-filed petitions.  I give a close review of those cases in Bryan Camp, Equitable Doctrines and Jurisdictional Time Periods, Part 2, 159 Tax Notes 1581 (June 11, 2018).

To his great credit, Judge Buch has, in a similar case, asked for amicus briefs on the issue.  I hope the Tax Court there comes to a different conclusion.  It’s always a balancing act: weighing the need for taxpayer access to judicial review with the need to obey statutory limits. Perhaps the Tax Court might reconsider how that balance should work for electronically filed documents.  However, as Professor Book puts it in this post over at Procedurally Taxing, after this case taxpayers now have a steeper hill to climb. You will find the sad details below the fold, along with my modest thoughts on how to strike a better balance. 

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Law School Rankings: The Good News, The Bad News And The Ultimate Proof That It Is Flawed

National Law Journal Op-Ed:  Law School Rankings: The Good News, the Bad News and the Ultimate Proof That It Is Flawed, by Alan B. Morrison (Associate Dean, George Washington):

Finally, after two false starts, the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings are out, and one clear positive is that the authors have now told us more clearly what counts and for how much. The newest version has some sensible changes, as well as some problematic elements, but the bottom line is that the dramatic shifts in methodology for the overall rankings prove beyond a doubt that the premise of the endeavor—that these are objective measures—is fatally flawed. ...

These huge changes [in methodology] —in one year—are neither right nor wrong. What they show is how subjective the rankings are. In other words, they are entirely dependent on the personal whims of the U.S. News staff, who are not practicing lawyers, law professors, or law students. This arbitrariness applies not simply to the categories—why are these and only these categories relevant—but why are these the right percentages? The accompanying press release advises students that the rankings are only “one consideration” among many, including cost. But the overall message that the rankings convey is that students should go to the highest-ranked school because one size fits all—why else would they pick the title “Best Law Schools.”

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Muller: How Law Faculty Succeeded In Diminishing Their Importance In The U.S. News Rankings
• The Borrower's Dilemma And A Tax-Based Solution To The Student Debt Problem
• It's Time For Law Schools To Rethink The Role Of Adjunct Faculty

Sunday:

• The Life, Death, And Legacy Of Tim Keller
• WSJ Book Review: Martin Luther King, Christian Radical
• Catholic Education And The Formation Of Conscience
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

The Life, Death, And Legacy Of Tim Keller

• The Atlantic, Tim Keller’s Critique of Liberal Secularism
• Christianity Today, Died: Tim Keller, New York City Pastor Who Modeled Winsome Witness
• Christianity Today, Tim Keller Practiced the Grace He Preached
• Digital Liturgies, He Made Me Want to Be More Like Jesus
• The Federalist, Gospel Giant Tim Keller Leaves A Profound Legacy Worthy Of High Praise And Fair Critique
• New York Times, The Rev. Timothy Keller, Pioneering Manhattan Evangelist, Dies at 72
• The New Yorker, The Far-Seeing Faith of Tim Keller

The Atlantic:  Growing My Faith in the Face of Death, by Tim Keller (Founding Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City):

I have spent a good part of my life talking with people about the role of faith in the face of imminent death. Since I became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1975, I have sat at countless bedsides, and occasionally even watched someone take their final breath. I recently wrote a small book, On Death, relating a lot of what I say to people in such times. But when, a little more than a month after that book was published, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I was still caught unprepared. ...

My wife, Kathy, and I spent much time in tears and disbelief. We were both turning 70, but felt strong, clear-minded, and capable of nearly all the things we have done for the past 50 years. “I thought we’d feel a lot older when we got to this age,” Kathy said. We had plenty of plans and lots of comforts, especially our children and grandchildren. We expected some illness to come and take us when we felt really old. But not now, not yet. This couldn’t be; what was God doing to us? The Bible, and especially the Psalms, gave voice to our feelings: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?” “Wake up, O Lord. Why are you sleeping?” “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”

A significant number of believers in God find their faith shaken or destroyed when they learn that they will die at a time and in a way that seems unfair to them. Before my diagnosis, I had seen this in people of many faiths. One woman with cancer told me years ago, “I’m not a believer anymore—that doesn’t work for me. I can’t believe in a personal God who would do something like this to me.” Cancer killed her God.

What would happen to me? I felt like a surgeon who was suddenly on the operating table. Would I be able to take my own advice?

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WSJ Book Review: Martin Luther King, Christian Radical

Wall Street Journal, Martin Luther King, Christian Radical, by Jonathan Eig (Author, King: A Life (2023)):

Today, almost 1,000 cities and towns in the U.S. have streets named in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., and more than 100 public schools bear his name. In Washington, D.C., a 30-foot-tall MLK memorial stands within sight of the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. And each year, in January, we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday as a national holiday.

But in hallowing King we have hollowed out his legacy. We remember his dream of unity and justice without deeper consideration of the radical Christianity upon which that dream was built. King’s Christianity presents a challenge to liberals, who are often uncomfortable with religion in the public square, as well as to conservatives, who are more likely to embrace religion in politics but don’t align themselves with the implications of many of King’s core beliefs.

The popular version of King’s life story holds that he grew more radical in his later years—more like Malcolm X, more antagonistic to the American government in general and to materialism and militarism in particular. But that’s an oversimplification that leads us to downplay his most challenging ideas.

King adhered to the same Christian beliefs all of his adult life, views shaped by his upbringing in the Black Baptist church and the violently racist American South. If many Americans failed to notice King’s early radicalism, it was probably because they didn’t wish to see it, or were distracted by his readiness to engage respectfully with political opponents, or because his battle against Southern segregationists presented, to many observers, a clear-cut struggle between good and evil.

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Catholic Legal Education And The Formation Of Conscience

Daniel T. Judge (Notre Dame), Catholic Education and the Formation of Conscience, 96 Notre Dame L. Rev. Reflection 248 (2021):

Before all else, Catholic schools are “a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth. This relationship elicits a desire to grow in the knowledge and understanding of Christ and his teaching.” Accordingly, Catholic schools are called to assist in the formation and development of their students’ moral conscience. This, in turn, necessitates an inclusive environment; one that emphasizes human dignity in all its forms.

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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. [470 Downloads]  GILTI and the GloBE, by Heydon Wardell-Burrus (Oxford)
2. [396 Downloads]  Does the 'Initial Phase Relief' Make the EU’s Pillar Two Directive Invalid?, by Georg Kofler (Vienna University of Economics and Business; Google Scholar) & Arne Schnitger (Free University of Berlin)
3. [293 Downloads]  Taxation of Information and the Data Revolution, by Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
4. [220 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. [202 Downloads]  Capital Taxation and Market Power, by Kimberly Clausing (UCLA; Google Scholar),

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education:

1. ABA Journal, ABA Pauses Move To Eliminate LSAT Requirement For Admission To Law School
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Projected 2025 U.S. News Law School Rankings: The Biggest Winners And Losers
3. Donald Tobin (Maryland), A Preliminary Analysis of the New 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
4. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 2024 U.S. News Law School Peer Reputation Rankings (And Overall Rankings)
5. ABA Journal, ABA Increases Law School Online Course Cap From 33% To 50%
6. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), More Commentary On The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
7. Stephen Embry (TechLaw Crossroads), Should ChatGPT Be In Law School?
8. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), The Law Schools Most Impacted By The Methodology Changes In The 2024 U.S. News Rankings
9. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), The Impact Of The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott On Peer Reputation
10. U.S. News & World Report Specialty Rankings:

• Business/Corporate Law Rankings
• Clinical Training Rankings
• Constitutional Law Rankings
• Contracts/Commercial Law Rankings
• Criminal Law Rankings

Tax:

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Allocating Between Excludable Child Support and Includable Interest
2. Wall Street Journal, IRS Weighs Creating A Government-Run Tax-Prep Option; Americans Don't Want It
3. U.S. News & World Report, 2024 Tax Rankings
4. NYU Law News, Over 50+ Years, The NYU Tax VAP Program Has Launched Dozens Of Tax Prof Careers
5. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Exclusion Rules For Disability Payments
6. Jay Soled (Rutgers) & Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina), AI, Taxation, and Valuation
7. Ruth Mason (Virginia), Legal Problems With Digital Taxes In The United States And Europe
8. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
9. Blaine Saito (Northeastern), Review Of Automated Agencies, By Joshua Blank (UC-Irvine) & Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina)
10. Roundup, Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

Faith: 

1. Tim Keller: Growing My Faith In The Face Of Death

Muller: How Law Faculty Succeeded In Diminishing Their Importance In The U.S. News Rankings

Derek Muller (Iowa; Google Scholar), Law School Faculty Have Aggressively and Successfully Lobbied to Diminish the Importance of Law School Faculty in the USNWR Rankings:

In many contexts, there is a concern of “regulatory capture,” the notion that the regulated industry will lobby the regulator and ensure that the regulator sets forth rules most beneficial to the interests of the regulated industry.

In the context of the USNWR law rankings, the exact opposite has happened when it comes to the interests of law school faculty. Whether it has been intentional or inadvertent it hard to say.

It is in the self-interest of law school faculty to ensure that the USNWR law school rankings maximize the importance and influence of law school faculty. The more that faculty matter in the rankings, the better life is for law faculty—higher compensation, more competition for faculty, more hiring, more recognition for work, more earmarking for fundraising, the list goes on.

But in the last few years, law school faculty (sometimes administrators, sometimes not) have pressed for three specific rules that affirmatively diminish the importance of law faculty in the rankings.

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The Borrower's Dilemma And A Tax-Based Solution To The Student Debt Problem

Kate Souza (J.D. 2022, UC-San Francisco), Note, How Can I Ever Repay You? The Borrower’s Dilemma and a Tax-Based Solution to the Student Debt Problem, 73 Hastings L.J. 129 (2022):

The growing cost of higher education relative to wage growth means that college is no longer the sure path to financial security it once was. While the cost of tuition ballooned over the past several decades, government funding for higher education diminished. Students have made up the difference by borrowing more. For many borrowers, large student loans result in unmanageable debt that makes their financial futures less secure. Student debt also harms society and the economy. If the government wants Americans to continue to have access to higher education, it must find ways to make higher education more affordable

Politicians recognize the problems posed by the current historic levels of student loan debt. They recently proposed to cancel large swaths of student loan debt. However, debt cancellation is not a good solution. It is expensive, unfair, and offers mere temporary relief from a problem that will continue to plague future borrowers. A better solution would offer lasting relief

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It's Time For Law Schools To Rethink The Role Of Adjunct Faculty

Law360 Op-Ed:  Time For Law Schools To Rethink Unsung Role Of Adjuncts, by T. Markus Funk (Partner, Perkins Coie; Adjunct Professor, Colorado), Andrew S. Boutros (Dechert; Lecturer, Chicago) & Eugene Volokh (Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA):

Like clockwork, every August and December thousands of practicing lawyers ready themselves for the fall or spring classes they will be teaching at any one of the country's 199 American Bar Association-approved law schools.

Whether in their first or 30th year of teaching, and regardless of whether they do so at a national, regional, or local law school, these dedicated professionals volunteer to return to the classroom to share their insights, expertise and real-world experiences with the next generation of lawyer leaders.

The adjuncts' presence on campus is largely accepted as a given. Notwithstanding that, surprisingly little thought, scholarly or otherwise, has been given to: (1) what motivates them to take on these positions with little to no remuneration, (2) the exceptional positive economic impact this team of short-term instructors has on their institutions, (3) what makes for a positive adjunct experience, and (4) how institutions can more fully integrate adjuncts into the law school community with the attendant benefits to both from doing so.

In short, we live in a world where virtually every aspect of the contemporary law school experience is meticulously recorded and analyzed. Yet little to nothing has been written about adjuncts and the important — indeed, as the numbers might suggest, even business-sustaining — role that this sometimes almost invisible group plays at today's law schools.

Our institutions of legal learning have this summer to prepare for the fall 2023 semester. We, therefore, believe there is no better time to take a clear-eyed look at the adjuncts' role in today's law schools.

Following our more macro analysis, we propose 16 concrete actions law school administrators should consider taking to improve the adjuncts' teaching experience, overall happiness and feeling of belonging.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Saito Reviews Automated Agencies By Blank & Osofsky

This week, Blaine Saito (Northeastern; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Joshua D. Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) & Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Automated Agencies, 107 Minn. L. Rev. 2114 (2023). 

A lot of the news these days are around the rise of AI like ChatGPT. But already, we have weaker forms of virtual assistants. These days, I can often “chat” with an airline’s chatbot when my flight is delayed. Federal agencies, like the IRS, have implemented similar tools to present people with user friendly answers to their questions. But in their new article, Automated Agencies, 104 Minn. L. Rev. 2115 (2023), Joshua D. Blank and Leigh Osofsky raise some concerns. Building on their work on Simplexity, a term the authors coined for government pronouncements to the general public that tend to oversimplify the actual underlying complicated and nuanced law, they note that automated legal guidance tools may actually exacerbate the problems of Simplexity to a frightening extent. And often agency officials are unaware of these problems.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• 2024 U.S. News Business/Corporate Law Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Clinical Training Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Constitutional Law Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Contracts/Commercial Law Rankings
• 2024 U.S. News Criminal Law Rankings
• ABA, Winners Of The 22nd Annual Law Student Tax Challenge
• ABA Journal, Law schools should take on students' mental health and substance use from day one
• AccessLex Institute, 2023 Legal Education Data Deck
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine),  ABA Pauses Move To Eliminate LSAT Requirement For Admission To Law School
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), More Commentary On The 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Natalie Fortner (J.D. 2023, Arkansas), Comment, Mental Health, Law School, and Bar Admissions: Eliminating Stigma and Fostering a Healthier Profession

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Benzinga, How AI Is Closing The Wealth Gap
• Common Dreams, 'We Are Not Taxing the Very Wealthy Enough': Runaway Inequality About to Get Worse
• The Hill Op-Ed (Leslie Book (Villanova)), Don’t Let Politicians Punt the Political Football on Tax Reform Again
• Inequality.org, To Protect Our Children, Let’s Tax Our Rich
• Inequality.org, Why We Should Abolish the Super Rich
• New York Times, The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History Is Here, With Familiar (Rich) Winners

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2024 U.S. News Criminal Law Rankings

The new 2024 U.S. News Criminal Law Rankings include the criminal law programs at 196 law schools (the faculty survey had a 46% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	Score	School
1	4.4	NYU*
2	4.2	Harvard*
2	4.2	Stanford*
4	4.1	Columbia*
4	4.1	Duke*
4	4.1	Georgetown*
7	3.9	Chicago
7	3.9	Penn*
7	3.9	UC-Berkeley*
7	3.9	Vanderbilt*
7	3.9	Virginia*
12	3.8	Michigan*
12	3.8	UCLA*
12	3.8	Yale*
15	3.7	Northwestern*
15	3.7	Ohio State
17	3.6	Fordham
17	3.6	North Carolina
17	3.6	UC-Davis*
20	3.5	Brooklyn*
20	3.5	William & Mary
22	3.4	Cornell*
22	3.4	Texas
22	3.4	Washington University
25	3.3	Cardozo
25	3.3	Colorado
25	3.3	UC-Irvine*
25	3.3	University of Washington*
25	3.3	Utah
30	3.2	American*
30	3.2	Denver
30	3.2	George Washington
30	3.2	Loyola-L.A.
30	3.2	Minnesota
30	3.2	San Diego
36	3.1	Arizona State
36	3.1	Boston University
36	3.1	Emory
36	3.1	Maryland*
36	3.1	SMU
36	3.1	UC-San Francisco*
36	3.1	USC
36	3.1	Wake Forest
36	3.1	Wisconsin*
45	3.0	Florida
45	3.0	Howard
45	3.0	Indiana (Maurer)
45	3.0	Tulane*
45	3.0	University of Arizona
50	2.9	Alabama
50	2.9	CUNY
50	2.9	Florida State
50	2.9	Georgia State
50	2.9	Houston
50	2.9	Notre Dame
50	2.9	Richmond
50	2.9	Rutgers*
50	2.9	Seattle*
50	2.9	UNLV
50	2.9	Washington & Lee

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

2023 U.S. News Criminal Law Rankings

2024 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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Narotzki Posts Five Tax Papers On SSRN

Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) has posted five tax papers on SSRN:

Tax Implications of Contributing Appreciated Property Overseas, 179 Tax Notes Fed. 431 (April 17, 2023) (with Tamir Shanan (College of Management)): 

In this article, Narotzki and Shanan examine the application of section 367 to section 351 exchanges and the income inclusion issues that may arise upon a U.S. person’s contribution of property to a foreign entity. 

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Winners Of The 22nd Annual Law Student Tax Challenge

ABA Tax Section, Winners Of The 22nd Annual Law Student Tax Challenge:

J.D. Division 

1st Place: 

Tracy Costanzo and Amanda Hepinger
Syracuse University College of Law

2nd Place and Best Written: 

Ivan Rudd and Isaac Fuhrman Borgman
University of Miami School of Law

3rd Place: 

Justin Sung and Judd Baguioro 
University of California College of the Law, San Francisco

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Hemel Presents The Realization Doctrine And The Optimal Taxation Of Capital Income Today At The OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks

Daniel Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar) presents The Realization Doctrine and the Optimal Taxation of Capital Income (with Dhammika Dharmapala (Chicago; Google Scholar)) at the OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks Series (OMG = Oxford-Michigan-MIT-Munich-Georgetown) today: 

The realization requirement—a common feature of real-world capital income tax systems—defers the taxation of gains until the sale or other disposition of assets. As implemented, it generally imposes effective capital income tax rates that decline over a taxpayer’s holding period. Scholars of tax law and public finance have long appreciated that the realization requirement generates a deferral benefit and an associated allocative inefficiency (the “lock-in effect”). However, they have largely overlooked the relationship between realization and the optimal taxation of capital over the lifecycle. In this paper, we connect the realization requirement to canonical results in the optimal tax literature—in particular, the Atkinson-Stiglitz argument for the nontaxation of retirement savings and the Diamond-Mirrlees argument for high tax rates on savings withdrawn in midlife. First, we reconcile these results in a simple three-period framework with stochastic skill shocks in the middle period, demonstrating that the optimal tax rate on savings withdrawn in the middle period is high while the optimal tax rate on savings withdrawn in the final period is zero. We next show how the realization requirement partially implements the optimal age-dependent capital income tax schedule. 

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