Saturday, June 6, 2004
Ellen Aprill, John E. Anderson Professor of Tax Law at Loyola-L.A., already has had the type of career trajectory that us mere Tax Prof mortals can only dream about.
She came into the academy with as strong a tax background as possible:
• Phi Beta Kappa undergrad (Michigan), advanced degrees (M.A. & C. Phil, UCLA), and honors graduate and articles editor (Georgetown)
• Court of Appeals (4th Circuit Judge Butzner) and Supreme Court (Justice White) clerkships
• Associate at prestigious law firm (Munger, Tolles & Olson (Los Angeles))
• High-level government service (Office of Tax Policy, Treasury Department)
In her 14 years as a tax academic, Professor Aprill has continued this record of achievement with an amazing display of scholarly creativity and productivity, dedicated teaching, and leadership within the academic, professional, and civic communities.
On the scholarship front, her recent pathbreaking report for the ABA Tax Section, Report of the Task Force on Judicial Deference (with Linda Galler & Irving Salem), offers thoughtful recommendations on a crucial issue that has bedeviled the IRS, courts, academics, and practitioners for decades. Professor Aprill wrote one of the earliest and most influential articles in this area, “Muffled Chevron: Judicial Review of Tax Regulations,” 3 Fla. Tax Rev. 51 (1996).
She brings this same creativity and energy to her students: “Tax appeals to me because it asks both the biggest questions and the smallest. On one hand, the tax law codifies our social values and priorities. On the other, the tax code is a kind of puzzle, a set of interlocking rules. I try to convey to my students the joys and challenges offered by each of these aspects.”
Professor Aprill was the founding director of Loyola-L.A.’s graduate tax program, which now ranks among the nation’s Top 10 tax LL.M. programs. She has parlayed that experience into being a driving force behind the creation of LexisNexis’s Graduate Tax Series of course materials to be available beginning in Fall 2005.
Professor Aprill is a former chair of the AALS Tax Section and currently serves in a variety of leadership positions, including:
• Member, Council of Directors, ABA Tax Section
• Member, American Law Institute
• Fellow, American College of Tax Counsel
• Member, Academic Advisory Board, Tannenwald Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship
• Member, Board of Advisors, National Center on Philanthropy and the Law, NYU
• Chair, Planning Committee, Western Conference on Tax-Eexempt Organizations
Professor Aprill also is actively involved in the Los Angeles Jewish community. She is
the immediate past president of Temple Israel of Hollywood and a current vice-president of the Pacific Southwest Region of the Union for Reform Judaism.
Professor Aprill notes that she “went to law school after doing graduate work in Renaissance English literature and found, somewhat to my surprise, that working to understand the Internal Revenue Code calls for many of the same skills as working to understand great works of poetry: careful attention to the meaning, context, placement, and implication of the words on the page and questions about what factors to consider in interpreting the language. Tax law, however, offers not only intellectual challenge, but also the opportunity to solve practical problems and influence policy. To my joy, I have found that tax lawyers both inside and outside the academy relish thinking and talking about tax on all these levels.”
She shares her love of tax and the academy with her family: she is married to a tax lawyer, one stepson is also a tax lawyer, and her other stepson is a professor of medieval history. She is a doting “Nona” to Sam, Johanna, Nelson, and Ghita.
Each Saturday, TaxProf Blog shines the spotlight on one of the 700+ tax professors in America’s law schools. We hope to help bring the many individual stories of scholarly achievements, teaching innovations, public service, and career moves within the tax professorate to the attention of the broader tax community. Please email me suggestions for future Tax Prof Profiles. For prior Tax Prof Profiles, see here.
