Today’s Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the 2025 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in Chicago:
Taxation and the Constitution
The crisis in democracy has its consequences inside the world of tax just as it does outside of tax law. The papers on this panel consider how the destabilization of democracy in all its forms and the consequences of those changes will affect the existence of tax law. Are there ways to resist these democratic challenges, or to operate within the tax law as a tool of resistance to the new world of democratic instability?
- Joseph Clifton Fleming, Jr (BYU; Google Scholar) (chair/discussant)
- Neil Buchanan (Florida, visiting Toronto; Google Scholar), Distributive Justice in a Post-Democratic World
- Diane Kemker (Southern; Google Scholar), Forbidden Pleasures and the Tax Code
- James Puckett (Penn State), Tax Administration: Delegation, Guidance, and the Limits of Skepticism
- Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar), The Realization Rule as a Legal Standard, 16 Colum. J. Tax L. 1 (2024) (reviewed by David Elkins (Netanya) here)
The Social and Economic Impact of Taxation
To what extent is the tax code intended to provide a level of equity and stability for all members of the society funded by that tax system? And to what extent does it achieve any such goals? The papers on this panel explore the complementary questions of what tax law does to curb accumulation of wealth and what it does to support those who suffer from financial instability unsupported by social offers of assistance. Further, the papers each explore particular ways in which the tax law can advantage or disadvantage certain categories of taxpayers or whole parts of society.
- James Puckett (Penn State) (chair/discussant)
- Tessa Davis (South Carolina), The Gift of Debt
- Steven Dean (Boston University; Google Scholar), Fear of a Black Planet: Africa’s Decolonisation and the Transformation of the International Tax Regime
- Bobby L. Dexter (Chapman), Saving the Future: The Pressing Need for the Giant Education Leap
- Lauren Shores Pelikan (Missouri-Columbia), Tax Reform to Solve the Childcare Crisis in Two Parts: Affordability and Availability
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The Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright overturned Chevron deference, creating uncertainty in administrative law including tax regulation. While the majority opinion ended Chevron, it left ambiguous what standard of review courts should now apply—whether purely de novo or incorporating Skidmore weight.
ABA Journal, 
I’m trying to get a handle on just how vulnerable law schools are to an adversarial presidential administration. Here’s my list of potential vulnerabilities so far:
Large multinational companies (MNCs) are increasingly leveraging the enormous value embedded in the global digital economy. This has resulted in numerous innovations; however, it las likewise resulted in the loss of billions of dollars in tax revenue to governments due to outdated laws that generally assume a brick-and-mortar economy and residence-based taxation. Governments have tried to respond with a multitude of efforts to capture lost revenue and update tax laws to meet the realities of the digital era, but with only partial success. Resistance from MNC’s and disagreements amongst national governments have resulted in significant delays and half-hearted responses. The result is that current laws do not sufficiently capture lost tax revenue from an increasingly valuable digital environment.
Experiential legal education has become an essential component of the law school curriculum, emphasizing “learning by doing” through practical experiences in law clinics, externships, and simulation courses. This pedagogical approach offers law students the critical skills and professional values required for effective and ethical practice. Despite its recognized importance and parallels with other professional disciplines, legal education still requires minimal experiential education compared to other professions. This reluctance likely stems from lingering skepticism by some legal educators about its value, even though many stakeholders, including other educators, students, recent graduates, and other legal professionals, acknowledge its significance.
Legal Education:
Bloomberg, 
Over the past century, changing economic conditions, technological advances, and shifts in the composition of the American workforce have transformed the organization of many fields. Meanwhile, the legal field has remained stubbornly unchanged. Although multiple forces underlie this stasis, the extensive regulation of the legal industry is an important factor. For example, prohibitions on the unauthorized practice of law paired with a broad definition of “legal advice” have helped to maintain the role of lawyers as the dominant source of legal services. Likewise, limitations on lawyers’ ability to share fees or enter into business with nonlawyers have hindered outside investment and further entrenched a business model centered on the legal profession.
