Jonathan Barry Forman (Oklahoma)
- B.S. 1973, Northwestern
- M,A. (Psychology) 1975, Iowa
- J.D. 1978, Michigan
- M,A. (Economics) 1983, George Washington
Although I’m from Cleveland, I was always a westerner at heart, and now I get to live where the buffalo roam. In college, I studied psychology, thought about economic justice, and went to lots of antiwar demonstrations. I almost went to law school next, but the first time I went to a law library, I fell asleep. So, instead, I went to graduate school in physiological psychology – yep, running rats. Soon, however, I got interested in the rights of mental patients, and I went to law school to become a civil rights lawyer.
Thanks to Professor L. Hart Wright, I fell in love with tax law. I also took my first economics class in law school, and I still remember when Professor Peter Steiner nicknamed me “Robin Hood” because I wanted to take from the rich and give to the poor.
After law school, I clerked for Trial Judge Robert J. Yock on the U.S. Court of Claims and then tried tax cases for the Justice Department. In the evenings I got a master’s degree in economics and taught tax law at Antioch School of Law. After Justice, I served as tax counsel to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and since 1985 I have been at the University of Oklahoma
I usually teach individual income tax, corporate tax, and pension law; but I have also taught wealth transfer tax, tax policy, tax procedure, elder law, and poverty law classes. Most of my research focuses on how taxes influence individual decisions about work and retirement, and my new book —Making America Work (Urban Institute Press, 2006) — explains how tax, transfer, and regulatory reforms could both increase the economic rewards for work and promote greater economic justice.
I have been the Alfred P. Murrah Professor of Law at Oklahoma since 2005, and I am Vice Chair of the board of trustees of the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System. Over the years, I have also been active in the American Bar Association, the American Tax Policy Institute, the Association of American Law Professors, and the National Academy of Social Insurance. I have also lectured around the world, testified before Congress, and served on numerous federal and state advisory committees.
In addition, to my scholarly publications, I have a monthly column in the Journal Record business newspaper of Oklahoma City, and I have published op-eds in Barron’s, the Dallas Morning News, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Washington Times, the Daily Oklahoman, Pensions & Investments, and Tax Notes. My wife and I have two teenagers, and we all like to travel and camp. We are also birdwatchers, and I have a collection of almost 2,000 bird postcards.
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