Proposal Submission Deadline: Monday, June 2
The Washington University Law Review invites paper proposals for a symposium on “Taxing, Spending, and the Constitution” to be held on Friday, September 26, 2025, at WashU Law. Papers presented at the symposium will be published in the Law Review’s symposium issue (Volume 103, Issue 6) the following summer.
The Constitution says a lot about public finance. The text includes the Taxing and Spending Clause; the Sixteenth Amendment; the Apportionment Clauses; the Public Debt Clause; and the Appropriations Clause—to name but a few. And yet, for long stretches of American history, there were no great legal or scholarly debates over the scope of these provisions.
That has obviously changed. Constitutional issues in public finance are suddenly and unexpectedly relevant. To take advantage of the moment, the symposium aims to spur new conversations on these long-overlooked subjects—including dialogue between scholars of public finance who are interested in constitutional law and constitutional law scholars interested in public finance.
Possible topics may include (but are not limited to) constitutional issues concerning:
- Appropriations law.
- Tariffs.
- The scope of Congress’s taxing powers.
- The status of the Federal Reserve.
- Tax exemption.
The symposium will last one day and will include a group dinner. Participants will present their draft papers on a panel with several other participants. Participants will be expected to attend the whole symposium and to read the drafts of other participants.
Published papers should be between 10,000 and 13,000 words. The editing process for the symposium issue will begin in February 2026; the issue will be published in August.
There is no conference fee, and Washington University will provide all meals on the date of the conference. Funding is available to cover travel and lodging.
To apply, please submit to symposiums@wustllawreview.org a proposal of no more than 1,000 words by the end of the day on Monday, June 2. Submissions will be reviewed by a committee of Law Review editors under the supervision of the Symposium’s Faculty Advisor, Professor Conor Clarke. Selection will be based on the proposed paper’s originality as well as its capacity to spark collaborative dialogue with other presenting authors.
Participants will be notified of the Law Review’s decision by Wednesday, June 18. Rough drafts of participants’ papers will be due in early-to-mid-September.
Please direct any questions to the organizing Law Review editors and Professor Clarke at symposiums@wustllawreview.org. The Law Review looks forward to reviewing your submissions.
Eric Kubo
Chief Symposium Editor
Washington University Law Review
Nathan Zou
Editor-in-Chief
Washington University Law Review
Erin Layne
Managing Editor
Washington University Law Review
Conor Clarke
Associate Professor of Law
Faculty Symposium Advisor
Washington University Law Review
Daniel Epps
Professor of Law
Faculty Symposium Advisor
Washington University Law Review
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