2025-26 U.S. News Tax Rankings

The new 2025-26 U.S. News Tax Rankings include the tax programs at 195 law schools (the faculty survey had a 49% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

Rank	School
1	NYU
2	Florida
3	Georgetown
3	Northwestern
5	Virginia
6	Chicago
6	Michigan
8	Columbia
8	UC-Irvine
10	Duke
10	UCLA
12	Boston College
12	Harvard
12	Texas
15	Boston University
15	USC
15	Yale
18	Loyola-L.A.
18	North Carolina
18	San Diego
18	Stanford
22	Penn
23	Fordham
23	George Washington
23	Pepperdine
26	Indiana (Maurer)
26	Minnesota
26	UC-Davis
29	Temple
29	UC Law - SF
31	Alabama
31	Cornell
31	Miami
31	UC-Berkeley
35	Arizona State
35	Florida State
35	Ohio State
35	Pittsburgh
35	Villanova
35	Washington Univ.
41	American
41	BYU
41	Cardozo
41	Emory
41	Georgia
41	Houston
41	Notre Dame
41	University of Washington
41	Wisconsin
50	Brooklyn
50	South Carolina
50	Vanderbilt

Among the law schools in the tax rankings last year, here are the biggest upward moves:

• 14: Ohio State (#35)
• 13: American (#41)
• 9: Miami (#31)
• 8: Emory (#41), Notre Dame (#41)
• 5: George Washington (#23), Pepperdine (#23), Alabama (#31), Arizona State (#35), Pittsburgh (#35)

Here are the biggest downward moves:

• -11: UC-Berkeley (#31) 
• -10: Vanderbilt (#50) 
• -9: Houston (#41)
• -7: Florida State (#35) 
• -5: Loyola-L.A. (#18), Georgia (#41), University of Washington (#41)

Here are the rankings of law schools with graduate tax programs:

Continue reading

Noah Marks Joins North Carolina Tax Faculty

Noah Marks, Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke, will join the North Carolina faculty on July 1, 2025:

Noah Marks is a tax scholar whose research examines how taxpayers and practitioners bridge the gap between the words of the Internal Revenue Code and the Treasury Regulations, on the one hand, and their transactions and situations, on the other hand. In particular, he examines various administrative materials created by the IRS that, despite not being formal law, assign meaning to codified tax law, and he investigates the impact of various judge-made doctrines that apply alongside codified tax law. His current research includes investigating the prevalence and impact of lingering proposed tax regulations and illuminating the development and contours of the abandonment doctrine. His work has appeared in the Boston College Law Review [Winning by Losing: The Strategy of Adverse Letter Rulings (reviewed here)], the Lewis & Clark Law Review [The Implied Assertion Doctrine Applied to Legislative History], the Journal of the American Taxation Association [Book Review:  Partnership Income Taxation (7th Ed. 2023))], and the Harvard Law & Policy Review [Least Restrictive Means: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby]

Continue reading

2025-26 U.S. News Law School Peer Reputation Rankings (And Overall Rankings)

Continuing a TaxProf Blog tradition (see links below for 2008-09 to 2024-25), here is the full list of the 195 law schools ranked by academic peer reputation, as well as their overall rank, in the new 2025-26 U.S. News Law School Rankings (methodology):

Peer Rank	Peer Score	School	Overall Rank
1	4.7	Harvard	6
1	4.7	Stanford	1
3	4.6	Chicago	3
4	4.5	Columbia	10
4	4.5	Yale	1
6	4.4	NYU	8
6	4.4	UC-Berkeley	13
6	4.4	Virginia	4
9	4.3	Duke	6
9	4.3	Michigan	8
9	4.3	Penn	5
12	4.2	Cornell	18
12	4.2	Georgetown	14
12	4.2	UCLA	12
15	4.1	Northwestern	10
15	4.1	Texas	14
17	3.9	Vanderbilt	14
18	3.7	Minnesota	20
18	3.7	Notre Dame	20
18	3.7	USC	26
18	3.7	Washington Univ.	14
22	3.6	Boston University	22
22	3.6	Emory	38
22	3.6	UC-Davis	50
25	3.5	George Washington	31
25	3.5	Georgia	22
25	3.5	North Carolina	18
25	3.5	UC-Irvine	38
25	3.5	Wisconsin	28
30	3.4	Boston College	25
30	3.4	Florida	38
30	3.4	Ohio State	28
30	3.4	William & Mary	31
34	3.3	Alabama	31
34	3.3	Arizona State	45
34	3.3	Colorado	46
34	3.3	Fordham	38
34	3.3	Indiana (Maurer)	46
34	3.3	Iowa	36
34	3.3	University of Washington	50
41	3.2	Illinois	48
41	3.2	University of Arizona	59
41	3.2	Utah	31
41	3.2	Wake Forest	26
41	3.2	Washington & Lee	36
46	3.1	Florida State	38
46	3.1	Maryland	63
46	3.1	Texas A&M	22
46	3.1	Tulane	71
46	3.1	UC Law - SF	88
51	3.0	BYU	28
51	3.0	Connecticut	50
51	3.0	San Diego	57
54	2.9	American	104
54	2.9	Cardozo	63
54	2.9	Denver	88
54	2.9	Georgia State	79
54	2.9	Howard	127
54	2.9	Oregon	94
54	2.9	Temple	50
61	2.8	Houston	63
61	2.8	Kansas	50
61	2.8	Miami	92
61	2.8	Pepperdine	55
61	2.8	Richmond	71
61	2.8	Rutgers	104
61	2.8	Tennessee	55
61	2.8	UNLV	79
61	2.8	Villanova	48
70	2.7	Case Western	107
70	2.7	George Mason	31
70	2.7	Kentucky	68
70	2.7	Loyola-Chicago	79
70	2.7	Northeastern	68
70	2.7	SMU	43
70	2.7	South Carolina	63
77	2.6	Brooklyn	117
77	2.6	Hawaii	99
77	2.6	Loyola-L.A.	71
77	2.6	Michigan State	115
77	2.6	Missouri-Columbia	57
77	2.6	Oklahoma	59
77	2.6	Pittsburgh	79
77	2.6	Santa Clara	156
77	2.6	Seattle	127
86	2.5	Arkansas-Fayetteville	115
86	2.5	Baylor	43
86	2.5	Chicago-Kent	107
86	2.5	Indiana (McKinney)	107
86	2.5	Lewis & Clark	99
86	2.5	Marquette	59
86	2.5	Nebraska	71
86	2.5	Penn State-Dickinson	59
86	2.5	Penn State-University Park	68
86	2.5	Seton Hall	71
86	2.5	St. Louis	94
86	2.5	Wayne State	71
98	2.4	DePaul	133
98	2.4	Drexel	79
98	2.4	Louisiana State	84
98	2.4	New Mexico	107
98	2.4	St. John's	63
98	2.4	Syracuse	107
104	2.3	Baltimore	139
104	2.3	Catholic	71
104	2.3	Cincinnati	71
104	2.3	CUNY	156
104	2.3	Gonzaga	141
104	2.3	Hofstra	125
104	2.3	Louisville	146
104	2.3	Loyola-New Orleans	134
104	2.3	Mississippi	121
113	2.2	Florida Int'l	84
113	2.2	Illinois-Chicago	169
113	2.2	Maine	88
113	2.2	Missouri-Kansas City	99
113	2.2	Pacific	163
113	2.2	St. Thomas (MN)	94
113	2.2	Stetson	99
113	2.2	Suffolk	127
113	2.2	SUNY-Buffalo	94
122	2.1	Albany	117
122	2.1	Arkansas-Little Rock	139
122	2.1	Creighton	148
122	2.1	Drake	84
122	2.1	Idaho	141
122	2.1	Mercer	107
122	2.1	Mitchell | Hamline	154
122	2.1	New Hampshire	125
122	2.1	New York Law School	121
122	2.1	Pace	141
122	2.1	Quinnipiac	141
122	2.1	Texas Tech	88
122	2.1	Tulsa	127
122	2.1	Vermont	163
122	2.1	Washburn	121
122	2.1	Willamette	150
122	2.1	Wyoming	117
139	2.0	Cleveland State	121
139	2.0	Duquesne	92
139	2.0	Montana	99
139	2.0	San Francisco	166
139	2.0	West Virginia	117
139	2.0	Widener (DE)	169
145	1.9	Akron	127
145	1.9	Dayton	107
145	1.9	Detroit Mercy	134
145	1.9	Elon	158
145	1.9	Memphis	146
145	1.9	North Dakota	161
145	1.9	Northern Illinois	150
145	1.9	South Dakota	127
145	1.9	Southwestern	154
145	1.9	St. Mary's	148
155	1.8	District of Columbia	Tier 2
155	1.8	North Carolina Central	Tier 2
155	1.8	Roger Williams	169
155	1.8	Samford	107
155	1.8	South Texas	138
155	1.8	Southern Illinois	175
155	1.8	Southern	175
155	1.8	Toledo	150
155	1.8	Widener (PA)	175
164	1.7	Belmont	84
164	1.7	Chapman	104
164	1.7	Florida A&M	Tier 2
164	1.7	Massachusetts	161
164	1.7	North Texas	163
164	1.7	Northern Kentucky	134
164	1.7	Puerto Rico	175
164	1.7	Touro	169
172	1.6	Cal-Western	Tier 2
172	1.6	Campbell	134
172	1.6	John Marshall (GA)	Tier 2
172	1.6	Mississippi College	158
172	1.6	New England	166
172	1.6	Nova	Tier 2
172	1.6	Ohio Northern	Tier 2
172	1.6	Oklahoma City	158
172	1.6	Texas Southern	Tier 2
181	1.5	Capital	174
181	1.5	Pontifical Catholic (PR)	Tier 2
181	1.5	Regent	94
181	1.5	Western New England	166
185	1.4	Charleston	Tier 2
185	1.4	Inter-American (PR)	Tier 2
185	1.4	Liberty	141
185	1.4	Lincoln Memorial	169
185	1.4	St. Thomas (FL)	Tier 2
185	1.4	Western State	Tier 2
191	1.3	Appalachian	Tier 2
191	1.3	Ave Maria	153
191	1.3	Barry	Tier 2
191	1.3	Cooley	Tier 2
191	1.3	Faulkner	Tier 2

• ABA Journal, Harvard Law, Duke University Fall Out of Top 5 in Latest US News Law School Rankings
• Above the Law, Are The U.S. News Law School Rankings ‘So Arbitrary’ That They’ve Become Meaningless? Industry Insiders Seem to be Losing Faith in the U.S. News Law School Rankings.
• Above the Law, U.S. News Releases Two Wildly Different Versions Of The 2025 Law School Rankings At The Same Time
• Axios, Harvard Law School Ties Duke in Rankings Shake-Up
• Kaplan Survey, 62% Of Law School Admissions Officers Increasingly Say the Rankings Have Lost Prestige
• Law.com, Cornell Drops Out of T14, Harvard Slips to 6th in US News Law School Rankings
• Law.com, 'Like Oprah Handing Out T14 Titles': Redditors Air Grievances Over US News Law School Rankings
• Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News) & Eric Brooks (Principal Data Analyst, U.S. News), Changes for the 2025 Best Graduate Schools Edition: Updates This Year Include Three New Rankings of Law Schools
• Derek Muller (Notre Dame), Elite Schools Got What They Wanted—A More Transparent, Volatile Rankings System That Disadvantages Them
• Reuters, US News & World Report Law School Rankings Show Shakeup at the Top 

Prior Years' U.S. News Peer Reputation And Overall Rankings:

Continue reading

Principia Bibliometrica: Modeling Citation And Download Data In Legal Scholarship

James Ming Chen (Michigan State; Google Scholar), Principia Bibliometrica: Modeling Citation and Download Data in Legal Scholarship, 2023 Mich. St. L. Rev. 455:

A stretched exponential function taking the form f(x) = e^(〖-x〗^β ); x∈ [0,∞), β∈(0,1] characterizes decay, diffusion, and relaxation phenomena known as Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts processes. Recent work on relaxation kinetics in metallic glasses has described the conditions under the shape parameter β deviates from its usual value. Where β > 1, the corresponding exponential function is compressed rather than stretched.

The β-generalized exponential function provides good parametric fits for two measures of influence in legal academia: law review impact factors and Social Science Research Network (SSRN) downloads per author. A stretched exponential function (β ≈ 0.805823) models impact factors from 2007 through 2019. The shape parameter for impact factors has changed dramatically relative to citation data for 2006 to 2013, when β was approximately 1.027133. A compressed exponential function (β ≈ 1.219476) describes SSRN downloads per author by law school, except the single outlier atop the rankings. A power law distribution fits the SSRN data, but only for the top 100 schools. This result is consistent with the observation that power laws rarely model the entirety of a distribution, but only its tail.

Continue reading

California Bar Still Can't Decide How To Make Applicants Whole After Botched February Bar Exam

ABA Journal, California Still Considering its Options to Remedy the Flubbed Bar Exam:

The State Bar of California’s board of trustees decided April 2 to hold off approving provisional licensing for February bar exam participants while it considers other options.

California’s provisional licensure program, launched in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, had been supported in March by the Committee of Bar Examiners as an option for candidates who failed or withdrew from the February bar exam. The program, ending Dec. 31, allows law school graduates to practice under the supervision of a licensed lawyer until they pass a bar exam.

The board’s decision came after public comments from law professors and examinees at the board’s meeting demanded remedies for the troubled exam.

Reuters, California Bar Hits Pause on Provisional Lawyer Licensing tied to Exam Meltdown:

Continue reading

Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Do Law School Clinics Engage In ‘Progressive-Left’ Advocacy? Congressional Committee Seeks Information
• ABA Journal, How Can Lawyers Help Law Students Better Prepare For The Practice Of Law?
• ABA Journal, Judge Won’t Block Questions About Book By Ex-Wife Of Slain Law Prof In Her Mom’s Murder Trial
• Nicholas Allard (Dean, Jacksonville), To Be or Not to be the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave
• Bob Black & Bill Koppe (Sacramento Bee), How UC Davis Capitulated to Donald Trump and Harmed Law School Students
• Brave Little State (Vermont Public Radio), Vermont's Law School is a Fixture in South Royalton. So Are Rumors About its Future.
• Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, UC-Berkeley), Trump Is Targeting Law Firms and Academia. Why Don’t They Speak Up?

Continue reading

WSJ: Students At Elite Law Schools Rebel Against Big Law Firms That Capitulated To Trump

Wall Street Journal, Big Law Firms Struck a Truce With Trump—and Set Off a Clash With Recruits:

Campus recruiting is the newest front in the Trump-induced turmoil at some of the country’s most prominent law firms. 

In the days since Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps and other elite firms cut deals with the president to fend off punitive orders, their actions have set off protests and recruiting boycotts among the next wave of top young legal talent. Georgetown Law students canceled a recruiting event this week with Skadden Arps. A group of students and lawyers is circulating a missive on social media and over email, urging students at top schools to refrain from applying to the firms.

Continue reading

Tobin: XPT Top 25 Law School Rankings (Alpha Phase)

For the third year in a row (The Silly U.S. News Law School Rankings (2024-25), A Preliminary Analysis Of The New U.S. News Law School Rankings (2023-24)), Donald Tobin shares his thoughts on the forthcoming U.S. News Law School Rankings:  XPT Top 25 Law School Rankings (Alpha Phase), by Donald Tobin (Maryland; Google Scholar):

This year I took a different approach to the law school rankings. I asked experts in legal education to rank the top 25 law schools. I am referring to these as the XPT Rankings. As a warning, this ranking is in the Alpha Phase (which today I learned is when something is in the initial test stage. This is even before beta). Our experts all have significant years in legal education, either as an educator, leader, vendor, consultant or commentator. This year’s group of experts was small, and I stayed away from faculty members. I recognize that based on how I selected this year’s group, we missed lots of great faculty, administrators and other experts who have broad knowledge about legal education. We hope to include a wider group of experts next year. I am not asserting that this meets a rigorous statistical test nor that these rankings are objective. Also, for this year, I am not listing the experts to provide anonymity as the Alpha version is tested. In future years, I hope to provide more details about the methodology. (So please don’t tell me this is not a rigorous study. For the record, this is not a rigorous study). For this year, think of this group like a small NCAA Selection Committee, but a committee who picked teams you liked. 

Here are the XPT Top 25 Rankings for the 2025:

Continue reading

Sarah Lawsky Leaves Northwestern For Illinois

Sarah Lawsky, Howard Friedman '64 JD Professor of Law and Data Analytics Advisor at Northwestern, will join the tenured faculty at Illinois as the L.B. Lall and Sumitra Devi Lall Professor of Law in Fall 2025. Sarah received Northwestern University's Martin E. and Gertrude G. Walder Award for Research Excellence in 2024:

The award recognizes Lawsky’s international impact at the intersection of law, artificial intelligence and real-world policy questions of government revenue and equity. Lawsky’s research focuses on tax law and on the application of formal logic and artificial intelligence to the law. She has taught courses related to federal income tax, corporate tax, partnership tax, tax policy, tax deals and contracts.

"I am very grateful for this recognition,” Lawsky said. “Working at the intersection of law, computer science and philosophy right now is incredibly fun and exciting, especially collaborating with other researchers and seeing my theoretical work have practical payoff in the real world." ...

Continue reading

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Texas Supreme Court May No Longer Require Graduation From ABA-Accredited Law School To Practice Law In The State
• Former Georgia State Tenured Tax Professor Cass Brewer Joins Carlton Fields As Shareholder
• The High Cost Of Law School Casebooks
• Chodorow: Trump, Musk, Senate Republicans, And Your Taxes

Sunday:

• NY Times: Can The Jesus Of History Support The Christ Of Faith?
• Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Jesus
• NY Times: Will Religion’s Remarkable Winning Streak At The Supreme Court Continue?
• Christian Lawyers In The Public Interest And Outside The Political Right
• Straus Institute For Dispute Resolution At Pepperdine Caruso Law Names Interim Co-Directors And Launches Search For New Managing Director
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

NY Times: Can The Jesus Of History Support The Christ Of Faith?

New York Times Op-Ed: Can the Jesus of History Support the Christ of Faith?, by Ross Douthat (Author, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (2025)):

The latest issue of The New Yorker includes an essay by Adam Gopnik, “We’re Still Not Done With Jesus,” on the scholarly debates about the origins of Christianity. In the piece, Gopnik positions himself as a nuanced balancer between two serious schools (though he tilts toward the first): a school that holds that the early Christians mythologized and invented, but on the basis of some set of true events; and a school that treats the historical core of Christian faith as illusory and inaccessible and the books of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John as pure literary-mystical inventions.

Entirely absent is any meaningful treatment of the arguments for taking the Gospels seriously as what they claim to be: eyewitness accounts, or syntheses of eyewitness accounts, with a straightforward claim to basic historical credibility. This absence is not exactly surprising to a longtime reader of Gopnik’s work. But I will admit that I had been hoping — wishcasting? — that we were finally moving past a cultural landscape in which the only interpretations of Christian origins offered to inquiring readers of secular publications were those bent, as Gopnik puts it, on “rehabilitating aspects of Christianity on terms that a secular scholar can respect,” while taking for granted that “nothing happened quite as related.”

To be clear, I would not expect a non-Christian writer to simply embrace the thesis that events in the New Testament did mostly happen as related. But readers who look at the headline of Gopnik’s essay and its implicit questions — We aren’t done with Jesus? Why aren’t we? — deserve a fuller answer than you can get from just considering the range of perspectives he presents. They deserve an explanation of how the persistence of Christianity is connected not just to the Gospel story’s moral or mythopoetic power, but to the enduring plausibility of its historical claims even in the face of so many determined debunking efforts.

Continue reading

Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Jesus

The New Yorker Book Review:  Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Jesus, by Adam Gopnik (reviewing Elaine Pagels (Princeton), Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus (2025)):

One subject that never dies, and, more significantly, never bores, is the life and times of the first-century Jewish rabbi and martyr Jesus, whose followers founded a religion in his name, or, rather, in honor of his title, Christ, meaning “the anointed one,” or Messiah. (Not necessarily a divine title, it had previously been associated with military and religious leaders, often indicating something closer to “the great” than “the godlike.”) Along with Buddha and Muhammad, he is one of three nameable figures credited with founding religions that have continued to grow over thousands of years.

The Princeton professor emeritus Elaine Pagels, who has written many imposing and engrossing book, Miracles and Wonder (Doubleday), the title slyly looking at both St. Paul and Paul Simon. Though her purposes are manifold, she begins by ably navigating through the shoals of the essential but surprisingly unsettled sources that seem to relate the events of Jesus’ life and death. There are, first, the Epistles of St. Paul, the late convert who brought the Jewish heresy to the Gentiles, releasing it from Torah observance and law, and making it a universal faith. The seven undisputed Pauline letters were written in and around the fifties, about fifteen to twenty years after the Passion; six others are regarded as later, polemical forgeries, correcting Paul’s egalitarianism with more gender-bound rules. Then, there are the “letters” (Hebrews and Jude and so on) of uncertain early date and more uncertain authorship.

Continue reading

NY Times: Will Religion’s Remarkable Winning Streak At The Supreme Court Continue?

New York Times:  Will Religion’s Remarkable Winning Streak at the Supreme Court Continue?, by Adam Liptak:

In the space of a month this spring, the court will hear three important religion cases. The first one, to be argued Monday, asks whether a Catholic charity in Wisconsin should receive a tax exemption. In April, the court will consider whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma is constitutional and whether parents with religious objections to the curriculum in Maryland schools may withdraw their children from classes.

Taken together, the three cases will test the limits of the court’s assertive vision of religious liberty, which has been one of its distinctive commitments for more than a decade.

Since 2012, when the court unanimously ruled that religious groups were often exempt from employment discrimination laws, the pro-religion side has won all but one of the 16 signed decisions in argued cases that concerned the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion and its protection of the free exercise of religion.

Continue reading

Christian Lawyers In The Public Interest And Outside The Political Right

Jennifer Lee Koh (Pepperdine; Google Scholar), Christian Lawyers in the Public Interest and Outside the Political Right, 51 BYU L. Rev. ___  (2026):

This Article provides an empirically-based portrait of a population that is typically hidden from the public eye and has received scant attention in legal scholarship: Christian lawyers who engage in public interest work that falls outside the political right. Throughout the legal profession, lawyers who treat their Christian faith as a component of their professional identity and who actively endorse a politically conservative worldview are visible and active. With such lawyers’ increased prominence, growing political polarization, and reports of an overall decline in religiosity in the United States, the prospect of Christianity being perceived as synonymous with political conservatism seems greater than ever. And yet Christian teaching famously calls on its followers to care for the poor, protect the vulnerable, and seek justice for the oppressed. Where, then, does this leave Christian lawyers who engage in public interest work not associated with conservative causes? Who are they, and what factors might explain their relative invisibility? Beyond visibility, how does faith impact their public interest pursuits? How do they navigate tensions related to the politicization of Christianity?

Continue reading

Straus Institute For Dispute Resolution At Pepperdine Caruso Law Names Interim Co-Directors And Launches Search For New Managing Director

Straus Institute at Pepperdine Caruso Law Announces Interim Co-Directors and Launches Search for New Managing Director:

The Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law is pleased to announce the appointments of Professor Jack J. Coe, Jr., and Professor Donald Earl Childress III as Interim Co-Directors of the Straus Institute. In conjunction with this leadership transition, the Institute is also launching a national search for the new Judge Danny Weinstein Managing Director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. ...

Professor Jack J. Coe, Jr., is a world-renowned expert on international commercial and investment arbitration. Among his numerous scholarly achievements is his recent service as one of the Associate Reporters on the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the U.S. Law of International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration. He has a deep interest in the settlement of international disputes through mediation.

Professor Childress is a leading scholar of international arbitration and litigation. He has briefed and argued cases as counsel before the International Court of Justice and served as an expert on various matters before international tribunals and national courts, including the United States Supreme Court. From 2018 to 2021, Professor Childress served as the 28th Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department, where he worked on state-state mediation, conciliation, and arbitration. ...

As part of the new leadership team, the Straus Institute is also pleased to announce a national search for a new Judge Danny Weinstein Managing Director. The Managing Director will be responsible for advancing Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law’s commitment to academic excellence and the Christian faith through strategic planning, program development, staff leadership, and operational oversight of the Straus Institute. Further information and the application to apply are available here. ...

Continue reading

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Reuters, 2025 Multistate Bar Exam Scores Fall To All-Time Low
2. Josh Blackman (South Texas), Harvard Law School v. Vermeule
3. Yale Daily News, Yale Law School Terminates Scholar Amid Terrorist Link Allegations, Refusal To Cooperate, And Pressure From Trump Administration
4. Reuters, Closure Of U.S. Department Of Education Imperils Law School Finances, Deans Say
5. Jonathan Choi (USC), Amy Monahan (Minnesota) & Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota), Lawyering In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence
6. Joshua Fischman (Virginia), A Statistical Approach To Law School Citation Rankings
7. Sacramento Bee, UC-Davis Law School Suspends Student Government Over Israel Boycott
8. Mississippi Symposium, Tributes To Dean Deborah Hodges Bell
9. Scott Fruehwald (Legal Skills Prof Blog), Weekly Legal Education Roundup
10. ABA Journal, House Committee Investigates Northwestern Clinic's Representation Of Pro-Palestine Protestors

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

Tax:

1. Wall Street Journal, IRS Retreats From Some Audits As Agency Slashes Workforce 
2. Ana Paula Dourado (Editor-in-Chief; Lisbon) & Noam Noked (Co-Editor; Chinese University of Hong Kong), Call For Papers: Taxation Of Crypto Assets
3. Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (James Taranto), From Bob Jones To Columbia: Using Tax Law To Eliminate Discriminatory DEI Practices In Education
4. Orly Mazur (SMU) & Adam Thimmesch (Nebraska), Beyond ChatGPT: Transforming Government With Augmented LLMs
5. Daniel Hemel (NYU), Capital Taxation In The Middle Of History
6. Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis), Presentation Of Taxing Surveillance Of Citizenship At San Diego
7. Rita de la Feria (Leeds), Tax Fairness: Reconceptualising Taxation And Inequalities
8. Vinita Singh (Iowa), Weaponization Of Taxation: Sovereign Tax Immunity As A National Security Tool
9. Robert Metcalfe (Columbia), Presentation Of A Welfare Analysis Of Policies Impacting Climate Change At Columbia
10. SSRN, Tax Professor Rankings

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

Faith:

1. Vanity Fair, Christianity Was ‘Borderline Illegal” In Silicon Valley. Now It’s The New Religion
2. Dispatch Faith, A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment
3. New York Times, Yeshiva University Agrees To Recognize LGBTQ Student Group After Five-Year Battle
4. Christianity Today, ‘Severance,’ Suffering, And Faith
5. Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (Jennifer Frey (Dean, Tulsa)), Flannery O’Connor’s Tales Of Evil And Grace
   Grove City College, Regent Law School Dean Brad Lingo Named President

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

Texas Supreme Court May No Longer Require Graduation From ABA-Accredited Law School To Practice Law In The State

Reuters, Texas High Court Considers Dropping ABA Accreditation as Requirement to Practice Law:

The Supreme Court of Texas has asked the public to weigh in on whether it should end its requirement that lawyers admitted in the state must graduate from an American Bar Association-accredited law school — following a similar move last month by Florida.

The Texas high court did not stipulate why it is reviewing the ABA requirement — adopted in 1983 — when it issued an administrative order on Friday seeking public comment. A court spokesperson declined to comment, and the ABA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The move comes as the ABA faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration and other Republicans to end its diversity and inclusion requirement for law schools. All of the Texas Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican governors.

Continue reading

Former Georgia State Tenured Tax Professor Cass Brewer Joins Carlton Fields As Shareholder

Press Release, Former Georgia State Law Professor Cass Brewer Joins Carlton Fields’ Business Transactions Practice in Atlanta:

Cassady “Cass” Brewer has joined Carlton Fields’ Business Transactions Practice as a shareholder in the firm’s Atlanta office. He most recently was a tenured professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law and remains an emeritus professor of law at the university.

Brewer focuses on tax law and business transactions, with deep experience in the intersection of tax-exempt organizations and for-profit enterprises. His background in both academia and private legal practice gives him a unique perspective in advising clients on complex tax and business matters. During his tenure at Georgia State Law, his courses covered federal income taxation, nonprofit organizations, and business taxation, including corporate and partnership tax. ...

Continue reading

The High Cost Of Law School Casebooks

Jeffrey Bellin (William & Mary; Google Scholar), The High Cost of Law School Casebooks:

Commentators have forecasted the demise of high-priced commercial casebooks for two decades. Yet little has changed. This Symposium Essay explores the headwinds facing free and low-cost books in the law school casebook market. It suggests that the biggest problem is “casebook selection inertia.” Given the centrality of the assigned casebook to a typical law school course, professors face strong incentives to make a safe choice from among the leading casebooks—typically those published by a handful of established academic presses who set the highest prices. These choices stick, not only determining the book that will be used for that professor’s future classes but influencing the choices of generations of law professors for years to come.

Continue reading

Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABC News, 'Trump Bump,' Iffy Economy Cited for Huge Law School Application Spike: Experts
• Josh Blackman (South Texas), Harvard Law School v. Vermeule
• Andrew Blair-Stanek (Maryland) & Benjamin Van Durme (Johns Hopkins), LLMs Provide Unstable Answers to Legal Questions
• Jonathan Choi (USC), Amy Monahan (Minnesota) & Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota), Lawyering in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
• Joshua Fischman (Virginia), A Statistical Approach to Law School Citation Rankings
• Forbes, Risk Or Revolution: Will AI Replace Lawyers?
• Law360, Full 7th Circ. Urged To Review Law Prof's Retaliation Suit
• Independent Law Journal, Mission Statement 
• Samantha Moppett (Suffolk), Preparing Students for the Artificial Intelligence Era: The Crucial Role of Critical Thinking Skills

Continue reading

Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, April 7: Terry S. Moon (British Columbia; Google Scholar) will present Manufacturing Investment and Employee Earnings: Evidence from Accelerated Depreciation (with Yige Duan (Shanghai Jiao Tong; Google Scholar) as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love. 

Tuesday, April 8: Lori Stuntz (IRS) will present Using a Gravity Model to Predict Cross-Border Tax Avoidance (with Michael Udell (IRS)) as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle and Day Manoli. 

Wednesday, April 9: Natasha Sarin (Yale; Google Scholar) will present as part of the UC Law San Francisco Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Manoj Viswanathan. 

Wednesday, April 9: Adam Kern (San Diego; Google Scholar) will present The Hole in the Global Minimum Tax as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Wednesday, April 9: Steve Suarez (Borden Ladner Gervais, Toronto) will present as part of the Toronto James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Ben Alarie. 

Thursday, April 10: Manoj Viswanathan (UC Law-SF; Google Scholar) will present Damage Award Taxation And Distributive Justice, 109 Cornell L. Rev. __ (2025), as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak. 

Continue reading

LLMs Provide Unstable Answers To Legal Questions

Andrew Blair-Stanek (Maryland; Google Scholar) & Benjamin Van Durme (Johns Hopkins; Google Scholar), LLMs Provide Unstable Answers to Legal Questions: 

An LLM is stable if it reaches the same conclusion when asked the identical question multiple times. We find leading LLMs like gpt-4o, claude-3.5, and gemini-1.5 are unstable when providing answers to hard legal questions, even when made as deterministic as possible by setting temperature to 0. We curate and release a novel dataset of 500 legal questions distilled from real cases, involving two parties, with facts, competing legal arguments, and the question of which party should prevail. 

Continue reading

AI-Powered Lawyering: AI Reasoning Models, Retrieval Augmented Generation, And The Future of Legal Practice

Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota; Google Scholar), Sam Manning (Centre for the Governance of AI; Google Scholar), Patrick Barry (Michigan), David R. Cleveland (Minnesota; Google Scholar), J.J. Prescott (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Beverly Rich (Ogletree Deakins), AI-Powered Lawyering: AI Reasoning Models, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and the Future of Legal Practice: 

Generative AI is set to transform the legal profession, but its full impact remains uncertain. While AI models like GPT-4 improve the efficiency with which legal work can be completed, they can at times make up cases and “hallucinate” facts, thereby undermining legal judgment, particularly in complex tasks handled by skilled lawyers. This article examines two emerging AI innovations that may mitigate these lingering issues: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which grounds AI-powered analysis in legal sources, and AI reasoning models, which structure complex reasoning before generating output. We conducted the first randomized controlled trial assessing these technologies, assigning upper-level law students to complete six legal tasks using a RAG-powered legal AI tool (Vincent AI), an AI reasoning model (OpenAI’s o1-preview), or no AI. 

Continue reading

Fischman: A Statistical Approach To Law School Citation Rankings

Joshua Fischman (Virginia; Google Scholar), A Statistical Approach to Law School Citation Rankings, 21 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 632 (2024): 

Citation rankings have emerged as a popular approach to ranking the scholarly impact of law faculties. This paper develops a statistical approach for inferring faculty quality from citation counts and determining when differences among law schools are significant. Statistical tests demonstrate that the distribution of citations within faculties closely follows the lognormal distribution, subject to small adjustments. This suggests a simple test for comparing faculties: whether they could be drawn from lognormal distributions with the same log mean. Under this approach, the geometric mean of citations is the most efficient measure for summarizing faculty quality. Using citation data collected from HeinOnline, this article provides a citation ranking for 195 law schools in the United States. Most differences between peer schools are statistically insignificant, and confidence intervals on citation ranks are extremely wide. Except for the highest-ranked faculties, citation rankings provide little information on the relative quality of faculties.

Continue reading

Penn State Seeks To Hire A Tax Visitor

Penn State Dickinson Law, Visiting Assistant/Associate/Full Professors of Law: 

PENN STATE DICKINSON LAW is seeking Visiting Assistant Professors of Law, Visiting Associate Professors of Law, or Visiting Professors of Law for the 2025-2026 academic year at our Carlisle, Pennsylvania location. Visiting faculty work in support of the law school’s mission to prepare students to practice greatness.

The rank of this non-tenure-track, limited-term appointment will be visiting assistant professor, visiting associate professor, or visiting professor, based on the applicant's experience level. An extension of the appointment may be possible.

The appointment term may be for the full 2025-2026 academic year or just the Fall 2025 or Spring 2026 semester. Title will depend on the experience of the candidate. The compensation will be commensurate with the successful candidate’s current rank, title, education, and experience. 

Dickinson Law’s Carlisle location has the following curricular needs of visiting faculty for the 2025-2026 academic year: Basic Federal Income Tax, Business Entities I & II (Unincorporated Business Entities and Corporations), Legal Analysis & Writing, and Legal Research....

Continue reading

Choi, Monahan & Schwarcz: Lawyering In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence

Jonathan Choi (USC; Google Scholar), Amy B. Monahan (Minnesota; Google Scholar) & Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota; Google Scholar), Lawyering in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, 109 Minn. L. Rev. 147 (2024):

We conducted the first randomized controlled trial to study the effect of AI assistance on human legal analysis. We randomly assigned law school students to complete realistic legal tasks either with or without the assistance of GPT-4, tracking how long the students took on each task and blind-grading the results.

We found that access to GPT-4 only slightly and inconsistently improved the quality of participants’ legal analysis but induced large and consistent increases in speed. AI assistance improved the quality of output unevenly—where it was useful at all, the lowest-skilled participants saw the largest improvements. On the other hand, AI assistance saved participants roughly the same amount of time regardless of their baseline speed. In followup surveys, participants reported increased satisfaction from using AI to complete legal tasks and correctly guessed the tasks for which GPT-4 was most helpful. 

Continue reading

House Committee Investigates Northwestern Clinic's Representation Of Pro-Palestine Protestors

Reuters, US House Probes Northwestern's Law Clinic Over Representation of Pro-Palestine Protestors:

A U.S. House of Representatives committee is investigating a Northwestern University's legal clinic over its decision to represent protesters it alleges engaged in "illegal, antisemitic conduct," in what appears to be the first U.S. school to be subjected to a Congressional inquiry over legal representation.

The Committee on Education and the Workforce on Thursday sent a letter to Northwestern University requesting clinic budgets, policies and other information — citing its Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic’s representation of the organizers of a pro-Palestine protest that blocked traffic to Chicago’s O’Hare airport in April 2024 and resulted in 40 arrests. The letter is posted on the committee's website.

A committee spokesperson said Northwestern was the first law school investigated by the committee.

ABA Journal, Do Law School Clinics Engage in 'Progressive-Left' Advocacy? Congressional Committee Seeks Information:

Continue reading

Closure Of U.S. Department Of Education Imperils Law School Finances, Deans Say

Reuters, US Education Department Closure Imperils Law School Finances, Deans Say:

The Trump administration’s recent moves to shutter the U.S. Department of Education and shift management of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program to the Small Business Administration threaten to disrupt the flow of money vital to law school operations, deans and other legal education experts said. ...

Potential delays in the disbursement of federal student loans and the possible resurgence of the costlier private student loan market could result from the upheaval of the Education Department, said University of Utah Law Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner. ...

Continue reading

Chicago Law School Seeks 7th Circuit En Banc Rehearing Of Tenured Professor's Retaliation Lawsuit

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Law360, Full 7th Circ. Urged To Review Law Prof's Retaliation Suit:

The full Seventh Circuit was asked on Thursday to revisit a panel's ruling reviving a retaliation claim from a law school professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago who was disciplined for including a redacted racist slur on an exam, saying the opinion "raises, without answering, questions of exceptional importance that will have sweeping implications for university officials."

The opinion by an initial three-judge panel in March reversed the dismissal of a retaliation claim by professor Jason Kilborn, who drew anger on campus after he included the abbreviations "n___" and "b___" on an exam question about a hypothetical employment discrimination matter.

Kilborn claims university officials retaliated against his protected speech under the First Amendment and compelled his speech during an eight-week diversity course he was required to take before returning to work, following a two-semester suspension. He also alleges his due process rights were violated when he was declared ineligible for an across-the-board raise in response to the school's finding that he violated a college nondiscrimination policy he deems unconstitutionally vague.

Continue reading

Subscribing To TaxProf Blog

We offer three ways to have TaxProf Blog content automatically delivered to your computer, tablet, or smart phone:

Follow @SoCalTaxProf

RSS Feeds:  You can subscribe to one of three different feeds to receive TaxProf Blog posts via your RSS reader:

• All Posts will send you all blog posts
• Tax Posts will send you only tax-related blog posts
• Legal Education will send you only legal education-related blog posts

Email:  You can subscribe to receive TaxProf Blog posts via email through one of five approaches:

1. FeedBlitz:  Enter your email address here to receive TaxProf Blog posts via email, delivered to you either daily, every 12 hours, every 8 hours, every 4 hours, or hourly (at your option).
2. TaxProf Blog Email Service:  Email me to be added to my daily email with titles and links to all TaxProf Blog posts.
3. TaxProf Blog Legal Education Email Service:  Email me to be added to my daily email with titles and links to TaxProf Blog posts on legal education topics.
4. TaxProf Blog Tax Email Service:  Email me to be added to my daily email with titles and links to TaxProf Blog posts on tax topics.
5. TaxProf Blog Faith Email Service:  Email me to be added to my Sunday (and certain holiday) email with titles and links to TaxProf Blog posts on faith topics.

The Independent Law Journal

Mission Statement of the Independent Law Journal:

The Independent Law Journal (ILJ) is a forum for independent-minded law professors, students, and professionals to publish scholarly articles, including pieces that conflict with current academic mainstream thought. The Journal is committed to free speech, freedom from ideological discrimination, and fostering robust scholarly debate across a wide range of viewpoints. In keeping with this mission, the Journal is overseen by a board of distinguished and ideologically varied legal scholars. It is staffed by independent-minded law students drawn from America’s top law schools and selected for their academic excellence. As a nationwide scholar-led, peer-approved, and student-staffed journal, the Independent Law Journal brings together current and future legal experts to publish groundbreaking ideas. The Journal aims to provide a space for conversation across the ideological spectrum and believes that progress is often made through disagreement and that truth often emerges from debate. 

Paul Horwitz (Alabama), Alternate Headline: Law Scholars Launch Actual, Normal, Non-Silly, Scholarly Journal:

Kudos. Law faculty should take notice and steer their submissions thusward. And hiring and P&T committees, barring the qualitative review they are obliged to undertake, should presumptively view publication in such a journal as a stronger mark of quality than publication in a student-run journal, regardless of the prestige or ostensible selectivity of the latter. ...

Continue reading

Harvard Law School v. Vermeule

Josh Blackman (South Texas; Google Scholar), Harvard Law School v. Vermeule:

[M]ore than ninety members of the Harvard Law School faculty issued a statement concerning the rule of law ... 

The rule of law is imperiled when government leaders:

• single out lawyers and law firms for retribution based on their lawful and ethical representation of clients disfavored by the government, undermining the Sixth Amendment;
• threaten law firms and legal clinics for their lawyers' pro bono work or prior government service;
• relent on those arbitrary threats based on public acts of submission and outlays of funds for favored causes; and
• punish people for lawfully speaking out on matters of public concern. ...

Adrian Vermeule ... has written a response. Vermeule identifies a problem: how are students who agree with President Trump's policies to approach professors who have castigated Trump as antithetical to the rule of law?

Continue reading

Support TaxProf Blog By Shopping On Amazon

TaxProf Blog participates in the amazon.com affiliate program. You can help support TaxProf Blog at no cost to you by making purchases through Amazon links on the blog and through the search box in the right column of the blog:

Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Going Green: Oday Salim Works With Michigan Law Students To Amend City Code
• ABA Journal, New Hampshire Law School Found Noncompliant With ABA Accreditation Standard
• American Constitution Society Expert Forum:  Law School Deans Have a Moral Imperative, by Zephyr Teachout (Fordham)
• Axios, Law School Applications Are Skyrocketing in D.C.
• Axios, Law School Applications Are Spiking in Minnesota
• Axios, Law School Applications Are Surging in Philly
• College Fix, Congress Urged to Ban DEI Accreditation Standards as ABA Drops Diversity Mandate
• Bridget Crawford (Pace),  Where Are the Women? George Mason Law School & ACTEC Foundation Edition
• Thomas Gallanis (George Mason), Diversity, Non-Discrimination, and a Symposium: A Response to Professor Crawford

Continue reading

Yale Law School Terminates Scholar Amid Terrorist Link Allegations, Refusal To Cooperate, And Pressure From Trump Administration

Following up on my previous post, New York Times: Yale Law School Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her Of Terrorist Link:  Yale Daily News, Yale Law School Terminates Scholar Amid Terrorist Link Allegations, Cites “Refusal to Cooperate”: 

Three weeks after being placed on administrative leave, Yale Law School is terminating associate research scholar Helyeh Doutaghi’s contract, citing her “refusal to cooperate.” Doutaghi was put on “immediate administrative leave” on March 4, following allegations that she is a member of the Samidoun Network, a designated terrorist organization in Canada and sanctioned “sham charity” in the U.S.

According to a statement from the Law School, over the last three weeks, Yale has requested to meet with Doutaghi and her attorney. Per the statement, Doutaghi has “refused” to meet or provide responses to questions of whether she has engaged in prohibited activity with organizations or individuals placed on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list.

“As a result of her refusal to cooperate with this investigation, Ms. Doutaghi’s employment with Yale — which was already set to expire this April — has been terminated effective immediately,” the Law School released in a statement issued in response to an inquiry by the News.

In an email to the News, Doutaghi described the Law School statement as one “capitulating” to the Trump administration’s attack on free speech rights of “non-citizens.”

Continue reading

2025 Multistate Bar Exam Scores Fall To All-Time Low

Reuters, National Bar Exam Score Hit Record Low in February:

Results for the February bar exam's multiple-choice portion of the national test were the lowest on record and suggest that pass rates for the entire test will be down.

The average score on the 200-question Multistate Bar Exam was 130.8, which sank below the previous low of 131.1 in 2023, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners. The MBE score on last month's test fell short of the February 2024 score of 131.8. This year's MBE average is the lowest since its debut in 1972.

Continue reading

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Hemel: Capital Taxation In The Middle Of History
• Symposium: Fifty Years Of Clinical Legal Education At American University Washington College of Law
• Will AI Replace Lawyers?
• Harpaz Presents Artificial Intelligence And Taxpayer Entity At Case Western

Sunday:

• A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment
• WSJ Op-Ed: Flannery O’Connor’s Tales Of Evil And Grace
• Vanity Fair: Christianity Was ‘Borderline Illegal’ In Silicon Valley. Now It’s The New Religion.
• NY Times: Yeshiva University Agrees To Recognize LGBTQ Student Group After Five-Year Battle
• Is There A ‘Trump Bump’ In Law School Admissions?
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment

Dispatch Faith:  A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment, by Paul D. Miller (Georgetown; Google Scholar):

Most American Christians know the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who heroically defied the Nazis.

He and a small number of other German Protestant leaders gathered, calling themselves the Confessing Church. They issued the Barmen Declaration in 1934, affirming the church’s independence from the Nazi government, which tried to force them to join an official “Reich Church.” They were right to do so, but by then the Nazis were too entrenched, too powerful, and too popular. Most of the Barmen leaders lost jobs, several spent time in the concentration camps, and many were executed for the principled stand against Nazi tyranny. Bonhoeffer himself took part in a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Tragically he was caught, imprisoned, and ultimately martyred in the waning days of World War II.

May we all be as courageous when the Whore of Babylon comes for us.

We rightly applaud Bonhoeffer today. But, if we are allowed to critique our martyrs, can’t we say that heroic as they were, Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church were ultimately too late? Where were Bonhoeffer and the other leaders of the Confessing Church before the Nazis came to power in 1933? Where were they during the days of the Weimar Republic, when they might have made a difference? The answer is that most were members of various centrist political parties, completing their studies and establishing their careers. For all their later heroism, they failed to see the growing threat to  the republic when it might still have been saved. By the time they took their principled stand, the die had been cast.

If the Confessing Church was right to assert its independence and public witness against the Nazis in the 1930s, it would have been even better to do so earlier, in the 1920s, before the Nazis came to power but while the republic was tottering under the onslaught of extremists from all sides. The principles of the Confessing Church were not valid only for their moment; they were timeless principles of political theology that should bind the universal church in all times and places. 

It’s a relevant question for the American church in 2025. Whether you are on the left or the right, it is tempting to see ourselves as living through Germany in 1933, confronting the moral equivalent of the Nazis on the other side. There is a moral clarity to it, stark lines dividing the good guys from the bad. Our duty is obvious; the only question is whether we can muster the courage. 

But the analogy can be misleading, and it excuses us from examining our own side. We should be able to spot injustices from both sides of the political aisle. It is harder, intellectually and spiritually, to confront a different historical analogy. Maybe we’re not living through the Nazi regime in 1933, but through the Weimar Republic of 1923. ...

Continue reading

WSJ Op-Ed: Flannery O’Connor’s Tales Of Evil And Grace

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  Flannery O’Connor’s Tales of Evil and Grace, by (Jennifer Frey (Dean, Tulsa)):

Flannery O’Connor, arguably the best Catholic writer this country ever produced, was born 100 years ago March 25 in Savannah, Ga. Her short life was marked by profound suffering: She was 15 when her father died of lupus and 25 when she was diagnosed with the same disease, which would end her life at 39. Her grief gave her an insight into the power of God’s grace—that it could be violent but also revelatory and redemptive. Her experience with the mystery of suffering would become the enduring theme of her fiction.

O’Connor’s work can’t be understood apart from her imaginative Catholic vision. She attended Mass daily and read St. Thomas Aquinas before bed every evening. Because of the violence O’Connor made her outlandish Southern characters endure, a critic once described her as a hillbilly nihilist. She protested that “hillbilly Thomist” was more apt, because she wrote happy stories thick with the promise of God’s mercy. O’Connor believed that although we are fallen, we are still good, and if we freely cooperate with God’s grace, our nature can be perfected in union with him. ...

O’Connor aimed to shock her reader every bit as much as she was shocked by grace at an early age. She wrote “grotesque Southern fiction” because she thought her characters needed to confront the mysteries of evil and grace, and she believed this confrontation must be violent and comic to her secular and “Christ haunted” audience. One of her most famous characters, the Misfit, is a criminal on the run, haunted by the idea that Christ “did what He said.” Before the man kills a grandmother and her family, he complains to her that “it ain’t right I wasn’t there” at Calvary, because belief in Christ would have made him a good man. In this unexpected moment of confession, the grandmother is able to see the Misfit as “one of her own children” and worthy of an infinite love. ...

Continue reading

Vanity Fair: Christianity Was ‘Borderline Illegal” In Silicon Valley. Now It’s The New Religion

Following up on last month's post, New York Times, Seeking God, Or Peter Thiel, In Silicon Valley:  Vanity Fair, Christianity Was “Borderline Illegal” in Silicon Valley. Now It’s the New Religion:

It’s mid-October in San Francisco, and a crowd of 200 or so congregants—some seated in pews, others standing below cathedral windows at the back—bow their heads in prayer. Over cranberry-apple cosmos and plates of Burmese food served by black-shirted waiters, a DJ plays a thumping soundtrack of remixed worship music. This is not a church service or even a Bible study. It is, instead, an entirely new kind of event in Silicon Valley.

We are here to listen in on a conversation between Dr. Francis S. Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health and leader of the Human Genome Project, and Garry Tan, the president and CEO of Silicon Valley’s influential start-up incubator Y Combinator, which has hatched thousands of tech companies with a combined valuation of more than $600 billion. The event is called Code & Cosmos, and its underlying thesis is that the fields of science and technology, once considered diametrically opposed to religion and spirituality, might converge with the teachings of the Bible. In other words, business networking for the spiritually curious.

“What is the real basis of morality?” Collins asks the crowd. “Why am I here? What happens after I die?” Collins, a thin, owlish man, gazes solemnly at the crowd, which already seems to have a sense of where this is going. “Science,” he says, “can’t really give you an answer.” But there is another answer to these questions, and it has to do with one Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom Collins encountered as a 20-something medical student grappling with the limits of atheism. Ever since, he said, “I’ve never really hit a situation where what I know as a rigorous scientist and what I believe as a Christ-centered Christian are in conflict.”

Continue reading

NY Times: Yeshiva University Agrees To Recognize LGBTQ Student Group After Five-Year Battle

New York Times, Yeshiva University Recognizes L.G.B.T.Q. Club After Lengthy Battle:

Yeshiva University said on Thursday that it would recognize an L.G.B.T.Q. student club on campus, bringing to an end a bitter years long legal battle over whether the school could deny the group official recognition on religious grounds.

Yeshiva, a Modern Orthodox Jewish institution with campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx, had refused for years to recognize the club, which had been known as the Yeshiva University Pride Alliance. The case made its way through state and federal courts, even reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, and was closely watched by religious organizations and religious freedom groups.

But on Thursday, its administration said in a statement that it and the students had “reached an agreement, and the litigation is ending.” As part of the settlement, the students said the Pride Alliance would be renamed Hareni, a religious term they had suggested.

In a statement, the school said the club “will seek to support L.G.B.T.Q. students and their allies and will operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis.” ...

Continue reading

Is There's A ‘Trump Bump’ In Law School Admissions?

ABC News, 'Trump Bump,' Iffy Economy Cited for Huge Law School Application Spike: Experts:

According to the Law School Admission Council, the number of applicants for law school has jumped more than 20% from 2024.

What's behind the spike?

"I don't think anyone actually knows definitively because I think there's probably multiple factors at play," Anna Ivey, a college and law school admissions consultant, told ABC News.

Ivey said the last time there was such a large increase in the number of law school applicants was during President Donald Trump's first term in the White House.

"We called that the 'Trump bump.' There were a lot of people who thought it was a good time to flock to law school. Anecdotally, I can say there were certainly some portion of law school applicants who were motivated because of what they were perceiving happening in the administration," Ivey said. "I suspect we're having another 'Trump bump.' Now that he's back in office, I would not be surprised if that's happening at scale."

Derek Muller (Notre Dame; Google Scholar), If There's A "Trump Bump" in Law School Admissions, Then Law Students Have Discovered Time Travel:

Continue reading

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Derek Muller (Notre Dame), Law School Admissions Practices Continue To Look At The LSAT Like It's 2005
2. ABA Section of Legal Education, St. Thomas Law School Out Of Compliance With Financial Resources Accreditation Standard
3. The Atlantic, The Feminist Law Professor Who Wants To Stop Arresting People For Domestic Violence
4. John Bliss (Denver), Teaching Law In The Age of Generative AI
5. ABA Journal, Straight, White Female Loses Bias Claim Over King & Spalding's Summer Associate Diversity Program
6. Law360, Federal Judge Questions Wayne State's Refusal To Allow Blind Law Student To Take Classes Online
7. Lima News, Ohio Northern Settles With Terminated Tenured Law Professor
8. Chronicle of Higher Education, Plans To Hike The College Endowment Tax Are Not What You’d Expect
9. ABA Journal, Jones Day And Two Former Associates Settle Lawsuit Claiming Dad Bias
10. ABA Section of Legal Education, New Hampshire Law School Out Of Compliance With Financial Resources Accreditation Standard

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

Tax:

1. Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo), Review Of U.N. International Tax Cooperation By Leopoldo Parada (King's College London)
2. Washington Post, IRS Braces For 10 Percent Less Tax Revenue ($500 Billion) Due To DOGE Staff And Budget Cuts
3. Janet Holtzblatt (Tax Policy Center), Presentation Of New Performance Metrics For A New IRS At Georgetown
4. SSRN, The Top Five New Tax Papers
5. Chronicle of Higher Education, Plans To Hike The College Endowment Tax Are Not What You’d Expect
6. Kristin Hickman (Minnesota) & Amy Wildermuth (Pittsburgh), Harmonizing Delegation And Deference After Loper Bright
7. New York Times, IRS Nears Deal To Give ICE Addresses Of Immigrants Targeted For Deportation
8. Susannah Camic Tahk (Wisconsin), A Tale of Two Credits
9. Clint Wallace (South Carolina) & Bret Wells (Houston), The Past And Future Of Taxing ‘Incomes’
10. Luís Calderón Gómez (Cardozo), Taxation’s Limits

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

Faith:

1. New York Times (Ruth Graham), The Malcolm Gladwell Of Conservative Christianity
2. Inside Higher Ed, Can Faith-Based Colleges (And Law Schools) Use Religious Freedom To Defend Against Trump’s Attacks On DEI?
3. Christianity Today, ‘Severance,’ Suffering, And Faith
4. Grove City College, Regent Law School Dean Brad Lingo Named President
5. Dispatch Faith, The False Battle Between Justice And Mercy
   Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (Gary Saul Morson (Northwestern)), Dostoevsky’s (And Our) Struggle With Faith

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

Symposium: Fifty Years Of Clinical Legal Education At American University Washington College of Law

Symposium, Fifty Years of Clinical Legal Education at American University Washington College of Law, 31 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 257-484 (2023): 

• Robert D. Dinerstein (American), Elliott S. Milstein (American) & Ann C. Shalleck (American), The Evolution of a Movement in Theory, Practice, and People, 31 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 257 (2023)
• Susan Bennett (American), Binny Miller (American), Michelle Assad (Western New England), Maria Dooner, Mariam Hinds (Fordham; Google Scholar), Jessica Millward (Idaho), Citlalli Ochoa (American), Charles Ross (American), Anne Schaufele (District of Columbia) & Caroline Wick (Villanova), Building a Culture of Scholarship with New Clinical Teachers by Writing about Social Justice Lawyering, 31 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 311 (2023)

Continue reading

Will AI Replace Lawyers?

Forbes, Risk Or Revolution: Will AI Replace Lawyers?:

As artificial intelligence reshapes many industries, the legal field faces its own crossroads. Over the past few years, a growing number of legal professionals have embraced AI tools to boost efficiency and reduce costs. According to recent figures, nearly 73% of legal experts now plan to incorporate AI into their daily operations. 65% of law firms agree that "effective use of generative AI will separate the successful and unsuccessful law firms in the next five years."

Investors have shown strong support for AI-powered legal startups, with funding reaching new record highs in 2024 with total capital investment of $477 million. The appeal for VCs is the potential that 44% of legal work could potentially be automated by emerging AI tools. Startups like Harvey, raised a $100 million Series C round at a $1.5 billion valuation.

We explore the current state of legal automation with Ben Su, Co-founder and Head of Growth of Capita, the world’s first AI lawyer, and discuss how this shift towards AI could reshape the delivery of legal services. Carey Lening, a legal-tech consultant and “recovering” attorney who focuses on privacy and data protection and Jide Afolabi, a probate lawyer, a graduate of Osgoode Law School with over 20 years of experience weigh in on the promises and pitfalls of automation in the legal sector. What are the challenges and criticism facing this change? What are its effects on legal education? What will AI might mean for the future of work? ...

Rethinking Legal Education And Professional Development
One of the more challenging issues raised by the shift toward AI in legal services is the role of legal education.

Continue reading

Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, Judge Tosses Bias Suit Over BigLaw Firm's Diversity Hiring Program for Summer Associates
• ABA Journal, Suit Alleging Dad Bias at Jones Day Resolved After Ruling on Memo
• ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, New Hampshire Law School Out Of Compliance With Financial Resources Accreditation Standard
• The Atlantic, The Feminist Law Professor Who Wants to Stop Arresting People for Domestic Violence
• Jeff Baker (Pepperdine), Annual Updates: Pepperdine Caruso Law's Program of Clinical Education
• Chronicle of Higher Education, Plans to Hike the College-Endowment Tax Are Taking Shape. They’re Not What You’d Expect.
• Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Hollis Robbins (University of Utah)), How AI Can Help Colleges (And Law Schools) Kick Their Addiction To Consultants

Continue reading

UC-Davis Law School Suspends Student Government Over Israel Boycott

Sacramento Bee, UC Davis Dissolves Law Student Group After It Implemented Boycott of Israel:

UC Davis dissolved the Law Students Association after the group passed a resolution that would institute an association-wide academic and fiscal boycott of Israel for its “ongoing genocide and occupation in Palestine.”

UC Davis School of Law Dean Jessica Berg announced Monday that UC Davis suspended operations of LSA and directed law school administrators to take control of the association’s funds, which amounts to $40,000, according to university spokesperson Bill Kisliuk.

Continue reading

Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, March 31: Robert Metcalfe (Columbia; Google Scholar) will present A Welfare Analysis of Policies Impacting Climate Change (with Robert W. Hahn (Oxford; Google Scholar), Nathaniel Hendren (MIT; Google Scholar) & Ben Sprung-Keyser (Penn; Google Scholar))  as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love. 

Monday, March 31: Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) will present Taxing Surveillance of Citizenship as part of the San Diego Tax Law Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Michelle Layser. 

Tuesday, April 1: Andre M. Perry (Brookings Institution) will present Black Power Scorecard: Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It (Metropolitan Books 2025) as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle or Day Manoli. 

Wednesday, April 2: Ariel Jurow Kleiman (USC; Google Scholar) & Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) will present Taxing Nannies, 110 Iowa L. Rev. 111 (2024) (with Emily A. Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar)), as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Continue reading

How AI Can Help Colleges (And Law Schools) Kick Their Addiction To Consultants

Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  How Colleges Can Kick Their Addiction to Consultants, by Hollis Robbins (University of Utah):

American colleges are spending far too much on consulting firms. ... They signal a fundamental crisis in higher-education leadership: the belief that external consultants, rather than internal expertise, hold the keys to institutional transformation.

But 2025 will mark the end of this era, as artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as a more-capable, cost-effective alternative. New premium models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Google Gemini are capable of ever more sophisticated data aggregation, analysis, scenario planning, and interpretation. Adopting such technology will help keep strategic knowledge where it belongs: within the institution itself.

In The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies (2023), the economists Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington criticize consulting firms for hollowing out government-sector expertise: “The costs incurred are often much higher than if government had invested in the capacity to do the job and learned how to improve processes along the way,” they write. “Internal expertise all too often gets shunned in favor of contracting a global consultancy.” This creates an expertise deficit, since “the less an organization does something, the less it knows how to do it.” ...

A similar dynamic obtains in the higher-education sector.

Continue reading

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 March 1, 2025) 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)	243,546	1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	13,186
2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	138,262	2	Jonathan Choi (USC)	11,896
3	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	131,615	3	Zachary Liscow (Yale)	7,830
4	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	130,789	4	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	7,239
5	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	129,746	5	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	4,842
6	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	123,476	6	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	4,700
7	David Kamin (NYU)	116,361	7	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	4,655
8	Cliff Fleming (BYU)	109,975	8	Kristin Hickman (Minnesota)	4,323
9	Ari Glogower (Northwestern)	106,536	9	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	3,947
10	Manoj Viswanathan (UC Law-SF)	105,759	10	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	3,650
11	Rebecca Kysar (Fordham)	105,544	11	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	3,524
12	Mitchell Kane (NYU)	102,218	12	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	3,475
13	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	57,158	13	David Weisbach (Chicago)	3,368
14	Michael Simkovic (USC)	52,304	14	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	3,303
15	Jonathan Choi (USC)	46,880	15	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	3,273
16	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	46,608	16	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	3,233
17	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	44,012	17	Steve Johnson (Florida State)	2,766
18	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	42,997	18	Kyle Rozema (Northwestern)	2,729
19	Richard Ainsworth (Boston Univ.)	41,603	19	Michael Simkovic (USC)	2,618
20	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	37,667	20	Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.)	2,528
21	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	37,302	21	Brian Galle (Georgetown)	2,482
22	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	36,244	22	Ed Fox (Michigan)	2,472
23	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	35,220	23	Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo)	2,360
24	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	34,119	24	Richard Pomp (Connecticut)	2,214
25	Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)	31,987	25	Edward McCaffery (USC)	2,128

Continue reading