Lawrence Zelenak (Duke) has published Tax Scholarship: Useful and Useless, 130 Tax Notes 1337 (Mar. 14, 2011):

In his article Academic Articles on Tax, 130 Tax Notes 1189 (Mar. 7, 2011), Jasper L. Cummings, Jr. claims that “from the viewpoint of the [tax] practitioners, judges and government lawyers . . . there is very little [scholarship by tax law professors] now appearing in the academic journals to assist the policymakers in understanding the tax law as it exists and operates and how it might be improved interstitially.” In contrast to the golden age of practical tax scholarship dominated by the likes of Erwin Griswold and Boris Bittker, we are living — according to Cummings — in an era in which “much of the academic work [of tax professors] is practically useless.” …

In my view, however, Cummings’ judgments are mostly wrong. Cummings undervalues the utility of the work of tax professors; he understates the quantity of practitioner-oriented scholarship they produce, and he adopts an unduly narrow view of what qualifies as useful when he excludes scholarship advocating legislative reforms. After explaining these two points, this response concludes with an argument that tax scholarship of no obvious utilitarian value also has a legitimate place in the tax scholarship universe.

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