The University of Hoston Law Center has a long history of strong tax teaching and scholarship.  UH has a well-regarded graduate tax program, anchored by five tenured and tenure track tax faculty and supported by a prestigious group of adjunct faculty drawn from Houston’s leading law firms.

In our just-completed 14-part series of profiles tax professors who have begun their careers at American law schools this fall, we profiled Christine Agnew, a very promising young tax teacher and scholar. Over the next four weeks, we will profile Houston’s other tax faculty, beginning this week with Johhny Rex Buckles:

• B.S. 1989, Oklahoma State
• J.D. 1992, Harvard
• M.A. 1999, Dallas Theological Seminary

My career aspirations initially pointed me to other worlds, when at the ripe age of three I declared my desire to become an astronaut. Three or four years later, a much more mature child, I settled for aspiring to the Presidency of the United States. Apparently disillusionment with the political process altered those plans, for after a few more years I decided to become a preacher, and then a carpenter. By my twelfth year, however, I had set my sights on law.

While a better-than-average public education (at least by rural standards) helped prepare my mind for law, the wheat fields and pastures of Northwest Oklahoma sculpted my character for the study and practice of law. Spending fourteen-hour days in summertime on a John Deere tractor, along miles of barbed wire fences in need of repair, and in the midst of obstinate polled Hereford cattle, I learned how to work hard and endure challenges. That work ethic served me well in college, law school, and practice.

At Oklahoma State University I studied accounting — not because I wanted to be an accountant, but because people told me that being a CPA and having an accounting degree would complement my legal practice nicely. Although I enjoyed financial accounting, I detested my tax accounting course and disavowed any interest in becoming a tax lawyer. Little did I know then that the practice of tax law was nothing like what I was doing in college. But after my first year of law school at Harvard, I worked on a tax legislative history project as a summer associate at a Dallas law firm. I was intrigued by tax law. The next fall, I took my first tax law course with Alvin Warren, and I never looked back. I took seven tax or tax-intensive courses (three with Professor Warren), declared to all law firms with which I interviewed that tax was what I planned to do, and landed a job with Thompson & Knight in Dallas.

The tax section at Thompson & Knight was an incredible training ground for me. I worked under fabulous mentors, including Emily Parker (who recently returned to T&K from her position as Acting Chief Counsel in the Office of Chief Counsel of the IRS). I was involved in significant tax controversies, and assisted clients in many types of tax planning. I eventually devoted the bulk of my practice to exempt organizations, and had the opportunity to represent major private foundations and public charities. While at Thompson & Knight, I also took a rather unusual course. I enrolled part-time in Dallas Theological Seminary and pursued a master of arts in Biblical studies. After four years of balancing practice with classes and homework, I completed my degree and tried to determine the best way to use a law degree and a seminary degree.

I had long been interested in teaching law — as early as law school. Eventually I decided that the best use of my education, experience and interests would be in academia. I entered the market and received an offer from Houston. I was thrilled to have this incredible opportunity. It seemed a great fit, and time has proven that it is. The faculty here in general are quite supportive, and my senior colleagues in tax law — Ira Shepard and Bill Streng — are not only very accomplished, but also extremely gracious and helpful. And my newly appointed (and professionally impressive) junior colleague in tax law– Christine Agnew — bears the marks of being yet another tremendous academic peer. Beyond my own law school, I have benefited from the encouragement of other law professors. I am especially grateful to Chicago-Kent’s Evelyn Brody for her interest in (and support of) my scholarship in tax and charity, and to Harvard’s David Westfall for inviting me to collaborate with him in updating his estate planning book.

I consider my job a professional delight. I thoroughly enjoy both teaching and scholarship. Prior to obtaining tenure, I focused my research exclusively on tax and charity. As a newly-tenured associate professor, I am adding law & theology to my research agenda. To date, I have taught the basic tax class, estate planning, exempt organizations, and tax policy. I have also taught trusts & wills, and a law & theology seminar.

My job is all the more satisfying because it gives me added time with my family, a source of great joy and rich blessing. I have a wonderful wife, Tami, and two children, Annie Grace (3 years old) and Rex (born this past August). My baby boy is already more than half of the size of his petite “big” sister, and he appears to be growing even faster than the Treasury regulations.

Although it has been about thirty-five years since I was a little boy dreaming of traveling by spaceship to other worlds, in some sense I spend most of my time in what some people call other worlds. One is the world of tax; the other, the world of the divine. Both are fascinating universes. Tax and theology may not seem a likely pair to some, but as my Dean has said more than once, I deal with the two certainties in life. Or, if you will let me say it a bit more poetically, I work with a revenue code internal, and a revelatory road eternal. And what a privilege it is.

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.