Omri Y. Marian (S.J.D. candidate, Michigan) has published The Discursive Failure in Comparative Tax Law, 58 Am. J. Comp. L. 415 (2010). Here is the abstract:

Tax comparatists tend to bemoan about the grim status of their chosen field of studies. Complaints are aimed both at the scarcity of decent comparative legal tax scholarship, as well as at the lack of theoretical foundation for the study of comparative tax law. The purpose of this article is to portray a more sanguine, yet critical, view of this field. Sanguine, since a sympathetic reading of contemporary comparative tax scholarship demonstrates that there is more than enough such scholarship that can (and should) generate a lively debate on comparative tax works and their methodologies. Critical, since all of these works fail to produce even the faintest form of paradigmatic discourse. The result is that contemporary academic literature in comparative tax law contains the simultaneous existence of bluntly conflicting arguments, taking parallel courses, yet never engaging each other. In this article I try to set a framework for a coherent academic discourse on comparative taxation, and to "force" such non-existent academic debate. I do so by placing existing comparative tax scholarship in the context of some pivotal debates in general comparative law, and demonstrate how contradicting arguments are abundant in the field of comparative tax law. One cannot help but wonder how is it that tax comparatists failed to engage each other positions. I further conclude that a possible reason for such disengagement is that it enables tax comparatists to comfortably rest in the warmth of their own scholarship without being bothered by questions regarding their methodological – and consequently their ideological – stances. Finally, I offer my own view in this currently imaginative debate by responding to a recent article authored by Carlo Garbarino.