Neil Buchanan has issued his annual call for tax papers and panels for next year’s annual meeting of the Law & Society Association in Chicago, Illinois (May 22 – 25, 2025):

The Law & Society Association (LSA) will host its next annual meeting from May 22 – 25, 2025, in Chicago, Illinois.  For the 21st year in a row (so we’re now of legal drinking age in the US), I am organizing sessions for the “Law, Society, and Taxation” group (Collaborative Research Network 31).  And for what is now the ninth year in a row, I am delighted to be working with Professors Jennifer Bird-Pollan and Mirit Eyal-Cohen as co-organizers of our conference-within-a-conference.

Under our signatures below, I’ve copied the Call for Papers email that LSA sent earlier this week.  Note that all sessions in Chicago will again be entirely live.

This year’s official conference theme has not yet been announced.  Not to worry, however, because you are not bound by the official theme of the conference,  Jennifer, Mirit, and I will give full consideration to proposals in any area of tax law, tax policy, distributive justice, interdisciplinary scholarship, and so on.

The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2023 at 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time (USA and Canada).  Note that October 15 is less than seven weeks from today!

Law & Society’s online submission interface changes annually, and although it is still far from perfect, I think it is now at least at the point where it is possible for users to work through the process, screen by screen, by starting at the >> Submit an Abstract or Session! button in the email below.  I am thus no longer providing bespoke step-by-step instructions, but I will point out a few important tips:

• If you do not already have an account, you should here to “Get Connected” by creating a username, etc.  After you’ve done so, you can click the “Submit an Abstract or Session!” button.
• If you would like to organize your own full session to be included with our CRN’s sessions — which we certainly welcome — you should not choose “Individual Paper” but instead should choose from among the other options (either type of Author-Meets-Reader (AMR) Session, Paper Session, or Roundtable Session).
• On the “CRNs” page, go to the drop-down list and choose our CRN31 (Law, Society, and Taxation).  If you want to choose one or two other CRN’s, feel free.  VERY IMPORTANT: It is essential that you specify “CRN31: Law, Society, and Taxation.”  If you do not specify CRN31, yours will not be included on the list of proposals that we receive from the LSA office, and we will thus not know about your submission.
• Note that, after you’ve clicked “Finalize,” you will not be able to use the online system to edit your submission. That does NOT mean, however, that you won’t be able to update your title or abstract later.  (You can do so by contacting us directly).  It only means that the online system will treat your submission as complete and uneditable after you click “Finalize.”

We will organize the submissions into full sessions, and I’ll send an email to all participants later in the academic year with a slate of our proposed sessions.

Your paper need not yet be written, and the only requirement (other than submitting the proposal through the online system) is that you have at least something (an outline, a first draft, etc.) that you can send to your session chair about 30 days before the meeting (which means mid-April 2025).

Note also the following limitations for each participant (with VERY limited exemptions, explained here):

• One participation as a Paper Presenter, Roundtable Participant, or Author.
• Unlimited appearances as a Chair and/or Discussant on a panel, or an AMR reader.

Please send me an email if you are interested in serving as a chair/discussant.

According to the timeline on the conference website,  “acceptance letters” will be sent in mid-November in response to submissions.

We look forward to seeing you again in Chicago.  If you know of any colleagues who might be interested in participating (especially those in fields other than tax law who would like to join our interdisciplinary community), feel free to forward this email to them.

Best,
Neil (writing also for Jennifer and Mirit)

Law, Society, and Taxation (CRN31) co-chairs:

Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Wayne State University

Neil H. Buchanan
Visiting Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

Mirit Eyal-Cohen
University of Alabama

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