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TaxProf Blog

Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law

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  • Alena Allen

    Charleston School of Law Names Jonathan Marcantel Dean

    Marcantel will become the fourth Dean in Charleston Law history. Marcantel joined the Charleston School of Law faculty in August 2011 and has served as Interim Dean and Professor of Law since November 2024. 

    Prior to joining the faculty, Marcantel served as the Associate Dean of Assessment at the Lincoln Memorial University-Duncan School of Law. Dean Marcantel graduated from the College of Charleston, cum laude, with B.A. in political science and history. Thereafter, he earned his Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. 

  • Andrew D. Appleby

    Oei Presents “The Origination Clause and the President’s Tariffs” Today at Boston University

    Shu-Yi Oei (Duke, SSRN) presents The Origination Clause and the President’s Tariffs today at Boston University as part of its BU Law Tax Policy Forum.

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  • Andrew D. Appleby

    Washington State’s Odd Place in the Millionaire’s Tax Debate

    Billy Hamilton (Tax Notes): Washington State’s Odd Place in the Millionaire’s Tax Debate

    Flying in the face of this long history of failure, the Democrat-controlled Legislature is taking another swing at the elusive income tax this year, but they’re proposing not a general income tax, but one that targets the state’s richest taxpayers: a millionaire’s tax.

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  • Andrew D. Appleby

    Hayashi Presents “Inequality among whom?: Tax Federalism and the Choice of Distributional Units” Today at San Diego

    Andrew Hayashi (Virginia, SSRN), presents Inequality among whom?: Tax Federalism and the Choice of Distributional Units at San Diego today as part of its Tax Law Speaker Series.

    Monday, March 30, 2026 | noon – 1:00 p.m. PST
    Warren Hall 2A, University of San Diego
    students welcome / lunch provided / registration not required

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  • Paul Caron

    The Atlantic: The Evidence That God Exists

    The Atlantic: The Evidence That God Exists, by Elizabeth Bruenig (B.A. Brandeis; M.Phil. Christian Theology, Cambridge):

    I grew up in a faithful Methodist household in deep-red Texas during the George W. Bush years, when the political sway of evangelicals was at its zenith. At the same time, evangelists of a robust atheism—figures such as the biologist Richard Dawkins, the critic Christopher Hitchens, and the neuroscientist Sam Harris—toured the country offending salt-of-the-earth Americans with their contempt for religious belief. It was hard for me to ignore that a number of their assertions were clearly correct. … The New Atheists were making hay of the fact that … faithful misapprehensions about nature were easily disproved by scientific discovery. Though I continued to attend church as usual, I privately wondered whether the entire enterprise might be rooted in nothing more than a misunderstanding. …

    This steady diminishing of faith probably would have continued indefinitely, were it not for one brisk autumn afternoon in 2011 when, standing alone at a bus stop, I happened to witness the presence of God.

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  • Paul Caron

    NY Times: Is There a Religious Revival in America?

    New York Times Op-Ed: Is There a Religious Revival in America?, by Ross Douthat (Author, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (2025)):

    In the early 2020s, secularization stopped: After rising for 15 years, the nonreligious share of the American population suddenly stopped growing. Ever since, there’s been a vigorous debate over whether this plateau is a precursor to religious revival or just a leveling off preceding a further fall from faith.

    The revivalists tend to have vivid anecdotes — Bible sales climbing, young American men storming the doors of Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic baptisms surging in France. The no-revivalists tend to have deflating data. No, Gen Z isn’t more religious than the millennials. No, evangelical churchgoing didn’t surge after Charlie Kirk’s murder. Yes, church attendance is ticking up in some traditions, but it might just be churches regaining people who stopped going during the pandemic.

    With Easter looming, let’s throw out some recent examples of conflicting revival-related evidence.

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  • Paul Caron

    Harvard Faith & Veritas 2026: Standing in the Gap

    Harvard Faith & Veritas 2026: Standing in the Gap (March 26-29):

    A University-Wide Gathering of Harvard’s Christian Alumni:

    Our vision: A rich community of faith leveraging excellence in our expertise, faithfulness in our calling, integrity in our character, and love in our actions to address society’s needs.

    Law Prof speakers:

    • Robert Cochran (Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law Emeritus, Pepperdine), The Moral and Spiritual Challenges of Law School and Law Practice
    • Robert George (McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton & Honorary Visiting Professor, Pepperdine), ‍America @ 250: The Country, The Culture, and The Cross
    • Mary Ann Glendon (Learned Hand Professor of Law Emerita, Harvard), Legal Ideals Then and Now
    • Michael McConnell (Richard and Frances Mallery Professor, Stanford), God Is Dead, and We Have Killed Him: Freedom of Religion in Post-Modern America
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  • Paul Caron

    Law Firms Hire Fewer Black Summer Associates Due to Pressure From Conservatives

    Bloomberg Law, Black Law Interns In Decline Under Pressure From Conservatives:

    The share of Black summer associates at US law firms shrank to its lowest level in more than a decade against the backdrop of a conservative push to end race- and gender-based preferences in school admissions and hiring, including a specific effort against legal internships.

    The summer of 2025 marked the third straight year in which the proportion of Black summer associates declined, representing a 3.5 percentage point drop since a peak of about 12% in 2022, according to an annual study released Tuesday by the National Association for Law Placement [2025 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms; Press Release]. Overall, the proportion of summer associates of color fell by 5.5 percentage points, to about 38%, the lowest since 2020.

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  • Paul Caron

    OnlyFans, More Than Taxpayers: Toward a Compliance Aesthetic in the Gig Economy

    Bridget J. Crawford (Pace), OnlyFans, More Than Taxpayers: Toward a Compliance Aesthetic in the Gig Economy:

    This Article examines how creators on the subscription-based platform OnlyFans understand and navigate their federal tax obligations, with particular attention to peer-to-peer advice shared in publicly accessible online forums. As independent contractors, OnlyFans creators must track income, manage expenses, and comply with complex self-employment tax rules. Yet little scholarly attention has been paid to how these creators talk about taxation or how tax compliance figures into their understanding of their work. This Article argues that tax discourse among OnlyFans creators reflects a distinctive rhetorical and cultural orientation that frames compliance not as a burdensome imposition, but as a meaningful component of professional identity. I call this phenomenon the compliance aesthetic: a self-conscious performance of legitimacy in which adherence to tax and legal norms operates as a claim to moral credibility and economic seriousness in a stigmatized line of work.

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  • Paul Caron

    Diversifying Law School Faculties

    Brian T. Fitzpatrick (Vanderbilt), Diversifying the Academy:

    I have been a member of the law faculty at Vanderbilt University for nearly twenty years. Even though my faculty has grown over that time, there are fewer conservatives now than when I joined. We are down to four—a mere ten percent or so of the tenure-track faculty—and two of the four are nearly 80. Remarkably, that probably makes us the most ideologically diverse department in the entire University.

    Everywhere I turn, I hear university leaders saying we need more conservatives in academia. There is little doubt anymore that they are right: scholars need skeptics to point out research weaknesses; students need provocateurs to help them engage with unfamiliar ideas; we all need balanced academic studies to help us make good public policy. But what I do not hear from many of these leaders is how they are going to do it. I have been thinking about this for many years, and I have some bad news: it is going to be difficult. I canvass the possibilities below and propose massive external pressure as the most promising course. But, first, it may be illuminating to break the problem down into its components: supply and demand.

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