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Paul L. Caron
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Pepperdine Caruso
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  • Kevin R Johnson

    AccessLex Institute: What Matters for Bar Success

    AccessLex Institute has released a study “[d]rawing on data from more than 13,000 law graduates from 36 law schools [that] examine[s] how academic performance (GPA and course grades) and coursework exposure (credit hours and course completion) relate to first-time bar passage. Results indicate that academic performance is more strongly associated with bar success than completing additional credits or specific bar-related courses.”

    Here are the “key findngs”:

    • “Academic performance is the strongest predictor of first-time bar passage, with doctrinal GPA and first-year GPA showing substantially stronger associations with bar success than coursework exposure.
    • Performance in specific upper-level doctrinal coursework is more strongly associated with first time bar passage than completion of these courses.
    • The findings suggest that law schools can best support bar outcomes by improving student learning, doctrinal mastery, and foundational competencies rather than simply requiring additional bar-tested courses. This paper is currently undergoing peer review.”

    Download Full Paper PDF

  • Conor Clarke

    Evaluating Treasury’s Proposed Nondiscrimination Regs

    Marie Sapirie has a new piece on the regs in Tax Notes, “Evaluating the Proposed Nondiscrimination Regs Under Bob Jones” (Sept. 28, 2026):

    The writing has been on the wall — or rather on Truth Social — for some time, but the IRS and Treasury finally released proposed regulations (REG-119986-25) on racial nondiscrimination in private schools. The proposed regs, issued on September 4, put at risk the tax exemption of private K-12 schools that are found to have policies or programs that violate the nondiscrimination rule. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the proposed rules “a clear standard” that would discourage schools from “rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing.” The stage was set decades ago for a showdown between private schools and the government, when the IRS claimed broad authority to revoke organizations’ tax-exempt status on the basis of public policy.

    The proposed regs are predictably broad. They reach every “educational policy, admissions policy, scholarship or loan program, athletic program, or other school-administered or school-supported program.” That language comes almost directly from Rev. Rul. 71-447, 1971-2 C.B. 230, which defined “racially nondiscriminatory policy as to students.” The only substantive difference is that the 1971 revenue ruling does not mention “school-supported” programs.

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  • Conor Clarke

    Early Evidence on AI and College-Grad Employment

    Robert W. Fairlie and Jane Wu (UCLA) have a new NBER working paper, “The Early Impacts of AI on Employment among Recent College Graduates” (September 2026), which may be of interest to those tracking the issue. (I interpret the rough bottom line of the paper to be “not that bad, so far.”) Here is the abstract:

    The impact of AI on the employment prospects of recent college graduates is hotly debated with no consensus on the magnitude of impacts nor even the timing of those potential impacts. Using CPS microdata, we provide the first estimates of the effects of AI on the unemployment of recent college graduates in June, July and August 2026. We provide evidence suggesting that unemployment rates are especially high for summer months and that 2026 might be the first year of widespread enough AI use in the workplace to detect impacts of AI on recent college graduates, the group argued to be most vulnerable to AI replacement. Taking an agnostic approach to defining treatment timing, we find that unemployment rates did not spike in summer 2026 relative to summer months in previous years and did not rise in a significant way relative to older college graduates or young workers without a college degree. We also provide the first analysis of an expanded definition of unemployment that includes those who report “wanting a job” which adds nearly two percentage points to the unemployment rate of recent college graduates but we find no evidence of a statistically significant increase in summer 2026 even after adding these “sidelined unemployed.” We estimate difference-in-differences and event-study interaction models using both older college graduates and young non-college graduates as comparison groups and do not find evidence of an increase in relative unemployment rates. Finally, we estimate models in which we interact 2026 unemployment with AI exposure and remote work availability by occupation and find some evidence of a positive relationship with remote work availability.

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  • Andrew D. Appleby

    Jay Leno Hails California Crackdown on Supercar Tax Avoiders

    Alicia Clanton & Hannah Elliott (Bloomberg Law): Jay Leno Hails California Crackdown on Supercar Tax Avoiders

    Jay Leno has amassed a legendary car collection and lent his name to a recent California law easing smog-check rules for some classics. But there’s one break for wealthy car owners he has little sympathy for: Montana license plates.

    …

    “If you can afford the car, you probably can afford the tax,” Leno said in an interview. “California is ridiculously expensive to live in, but we want to live here.”

    (more…)
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  • Alena Allen

    West Virginia Law Dean Finalists to Visit Campus

    The search committee, led by John Chambers College of Business and Economics Milan Puskar Dean Joshua Hall and search firm Greenwood Asher & Associates, has selected four candidates to visit campus. Candidates will be revealed the day prior to visiting campus. The first finalist is Professor Nadelle Grossman, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Marquette. The next candidates will visit campus on Thursday, Oct. 1; Monday, Oct. 5; and Tuesday, Oct. 6.

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  • Kevin R Johnson

    “UNC Chapel Hill Trustee Blames Law Professor for Infrastructure Budget Woes”

    It is always the lawyers. Inside Higher Education reports that “[a] member of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees blamed a politically outspoken faculty member for the state’s lackluster funding allocation for the university’s infrastructure budget.” Read the story for the big reveal.

  • Andrew D. Appleby

    Not Worth the Wait: Reflections on the Maryland Digital Ad Tax Rulings

    Darien Shanske (UC Davis), Michael Mazerov & Peter Enrich, Not Worth the Wait: Reflections on the Maryland Digital Ad Tax Rulings, 121 Tax Notes State 957 (Sept. 28, 2026)

    In this installment, the authors criticize the Maryland Tax Court’s three recent digital advertising tax decisions, arguing that they fail to even consider the differences between targeted digital advertising and traditional advertising and misunderstand constitutional doctrines, among other flaws.

    Previous TaxProf Coverage:

  • Kevin R Johnson

    The Conversation: College rankings, like those of US News and World Report, remain influential, despite their many flaws and decades of criticism

    Austin Sarat looks in a balanced fashion at the U.S. News rankings of universities.

  • Andrew D. Appleby

    Clarke & Marks: “Tax Exceptionalism After Loper Bright”

    Conor Clarke (WashU) & Noah Marks (UNC), Tax Exceptionalism After Loper Bright, 192 Tax Notes Fed. 1963 (2026)

    We consider how tax regulations should be reviewed in a post-Chevron world. In 2011, the Supreme Court’s Mayo Foundation decision subjected Treasury regulations to ordinary Chevron deference, rejecting National Muffler’s tax-specific standard of review and declaring that the Court was “not inclined to carve out an approach to administrative review good for tax law only.” In 2024, Loper Bright overruled Chevron. This Article asks what Loper Bright means for Mayo—and, in turn, for National Muffler. 

    We reject the simple inference that Loper Bright automatically revives National Muffler. But we argue that National Muffler nonetheless has a strong claim to renewed relevance: its reasoning substantially overlaps with Skidmore—and, more broadly, with Loper Bright’s delegation-specific methodology. We also explore two further implications suggested by our analysis. First, Loper Bright’s approach may invite a wider return of agency-specific deference in tax law and elsewhere. Second, National Muffler offers an entry point into a little-examined body of pre-Administrative Procedure Act caselaw reviewing Treasury regulations. This caselaw gives courts and practitioners a largely untapped resource for the kind of inquiry that Loper Bright now requires.

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  • Andrew D. Appleby

    Repetti Presents “How Our Tax Laws Aid Private Equity Investments in Hospitals and Nursing Homes” Today at Northwestern

    James Repetti (BC) presents How Our Tax Laws Aid Private Equity Investments in Hospitals and Nursing Homes at Northwestern today as part of its Advanced Topics in Taxation Colloquium hosted by Ari Glogower:

    The social welfare impact of investments by Private Equity funds (PEs) in various sectors of our economy is mixed due to the significant debt imposed on PE target companies and the short investment horizon of PE funds. With respect to PE investments in hospitals and nursing homes, however, most empirical studies suggest that PE investments significantly harm welfare. The large amounts of debt incurred by the targets of PE acquisitions increase the risk of default and contribute to excessive cost-cutting measures that harm patients. 

    Our tax system contains two features that significantly promote PE acquisitions. First, our tax system exempts gain realized by charitable organizations from the sale of their hospitals and nursing homes to for-profit purchasers. Theory predicts, and empirical evidence suggests, that tax-exempt sellers are willing to sell hospitals for less than a taxable seller would be due to this tax exemption. Given that these assets will no longer be deployed in the charitable sector, our tax system should not subsidize transfers to for-profit purchasers that reduce social welfare by exempting the gain from taxation. Even if the tax-exempt seller is not sharing its exemption with the for-profit buyer, policy considerations suggest that gain from such a sale should not be exempt. Since the tax-exempt seller has chosen to stop participating in the health-related activity, this is an appropriate time to return the foregone tax revenue to the government for a determination of its future best use, rather than allowing the tax-exempt to unilaterally make that decision. 

    Second, our tax system encourages large tax-exempt institutions, such as university endowments and private pension funds, to invest significant portions of their portfolios in PE funds. Our current debt-financed rules tax the investment gains realized by charitable organizations on investments they finance with debt. PEs present a convenient way for tax exempts to avoid these rules because the current rules do not reach debt incurred by targets. By structuring their investments as leveraged buyouts in which the targets incur all the debt, PEs present a convenient way for tax-exempts to leverage their investments and to incur additional risk without incurring tax liability. Given the harmful effects of PE investments in the health sector and the ambiguous results in other sectors, we should eliminate the incentive for tax exempts to invest heavily in PEs.

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