Author: Paul Caron
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NY Times Op-Ed: ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ Broke My Heart
New York Times Op-Ed: A Movie About America Broke My Heart, by David French (Author, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020)): I couldn’t stop blinking back tears, and I couldn’t understand why. I’d just walked out of a movie called “The Testament of Ann Lee.” Lee was the founder of the American Shakers,
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AI and Faith
Following up on my previous posts: Russell Moore (Christianity Today), Your Understanding of Calling Is About to Change Radically: You don’t have to seek God’s will for your career anymore. I’m mostly joking, but not entirely. We must always seek God’s will. But what we meant by this for most of our lives is about
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Rodriguez: Law School Deans and Agentic AI
Daniel B. Rodriguez (Northwestern), Law School Deans as Cheerleaders, and the Delicate Marketing Dance, Part I: The Case of Agentic AI: Times in the AI world are changing, and fast. The latest iterations of AI are described as “agentic.” Tech companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are developing tools that are notably autonomous, able to engage in
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Love: Taxing Complexity
Michael Love (Columbia), Taxing Complexity: Complex business structures have overwhelmed U.S. tax enforcement, leaving trillions of dollars of business activity beyond the reach of meaningful oversight. This article develops a new theoretical framework to understand and address the social costs of this complexity, identifying two distinct channels of harm. Not only does complexity shield a
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The Rise of Law Profs’ Amicus Briefs: How Academic Voices Shape Supreme Court Decisions
Adam Feldman (Empirical SCOTUS), The Rise of Scholars’ Amicus Briefs: How Academic Voices Shape Supreme Court Decisions: [Supreme Court] Justices increasingly turn to scholar briefs not merely for doctrinal synthesis—a traditional function of academic amici—but for empirical claims, historical reconstruction, and comparative constitutional analysis that shapes the Court’s understanding of fundamental legal questions. These submissions
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NY Times Op-Ed: Ash Wednesday and the Burden of Living Your Beliefs
New York Times Op-Ed: Ash Wednesday and the Burden of Living Your Beliefs, by Christopher Beha (Author, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer (2026)): On Ash Wednesday, I’ll join millions throughout the world in fasting, abstaining from meat and receiving ashes on my forehead, along with the reminder that
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Can Vibe Coding Make Me a Better Catholic?
The Free Press: Can Vibe Coding Make Me a Better Catholic?, by Will Rahn: Our Father, who app in heaven. When I sent my friends Jon and Billy links to a test version of the Catholic mental health app I’ve been working on, they both assumed I’d been hacked. … It all started this past
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WaPo Op-Ed: Christianity at the Super Bowl
Following up on last Sunday’s post, Super Bowl Leadership Lessons for Coaches, Players, Deans, and Professors: Washington Post Op-Ed: Christianity at the Super Bowl Defies a Trend, by Paul Putz (Faith & Sports Institute, Baylor Truett Seminary; Author, The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports (2024)): In many ways, America has grown more secular over the
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Leiter: Will AI Soon Cause a Massive Contraction in Law Schools?
Brian Leiter (Chicago), AI Developer Warns the AI Jobs Apocalypse Is Closer Than We Realize: [A]n excerpt [from Matt Shumer (CEO, Otherside AI), Something Big Is Happening]: [O]n February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one
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Andrew Granato Joins University of Texas Tax Faculty
Andrew Granato (J.D. 2024, Yale; JD-PhD 2026 (Financial Economics), Yale):
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67% Through the Fall 2026 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Up 19% From Last Year (42% From 2024)
We are now 67% of the way through Fall 2026 law school admissions season. The number of law school applicants reported by LSAC is up 18.9% compared to last year at this time. 186 of the 196 law schools are experiencing an increase in applications. Applications are up +30% or more at 91 law schools. Applicants are
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Morrow: The Income Tax as a Market Correction
Rebecca Morrow (Wake Forest), The Income Tax as a Market Correction, 76 UC Law SF L.J. 1373 (2025): I confess. As a tax professor, it has long hurt my feelings that economists label tax as a market distortion. My field is summed up as an impurity on the otherwise pristine complexion of the economist’s pure
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Truth, Consequences, and Faith
Dispatch Faith: Truth and Its Consequences, by Alan Noble (Oklahoma Baptist University; Author, To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times (2026)): What are we to do with the fact that Christians, like myself, claim to believe in what pastor-theologian Francis Schaeffer once called “true truth” and yet seem to be no less
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This Winter, Be Bored … And Hear Anew From God
Christianity Today: This Winter, Be Bored, by Hannah Miller King (Associate Rector, The Vine Anglican Church (North Carolina); Author, Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness (2026)): This slow and quiet season is an opportunity to hear anew from God. Parenting literature these days is full of encouragement to let kids be
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Super Bowl Leadership Lessons for Coaches, Players, Deans, and Professors
New York Times, How Mike Vrabel Opted for 4 H’s, Not Just X’s and O’s, to Spur Patriots’ Turnaround: When Mike Vrabel took over with the New England Patriots last spring, what he installed — on both sides of the ball, no less — was complex. The play verbiage was lengthy. There was a lot
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Sander: The Waning of Racial Preferences at American Law Schools, 2021-2025
Richard Sander (UCLA), The Waning of Racial Preferences at American Law Schools, 2021-2025: Up until now, no one has had much idea of just how, or whether, colleges, universities, and professional schools were complying with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision prohibiting them from using racial preferences in student admissions. Using an innovative new data source,
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Galle: How to Tax the Ultrarich
Brian D. Galle (UC Berkeley), How to Tax the Ultrarich (Roosevelt Institute Jan. 2026) (fact sheet): This report proposes a new tax, the Fair Share Tax (FAST), on very wealthy households. The FAST is imposed at sale like the current capital gains tax, but adds an interest-like extra tax on taxpayers who hold their assets
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Volokh: Free Speech and the Arkansas Law Dean Controversy
Following up on the post by Alena Allen (LSU), Arkansas Rescinds Decanal Offer: Eugene Volokh (UCLA; Hoover Institution), Free Speech at the Higher End of the Org Chart: Thoughts on the Arkansas Dean Controversy: From the N.Y. Times (Stephanie Saul) last week: Less than a week after naming a new dean, the University of Arkansas Law School has
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DOJ Tax’s Dissolution Forces a High-Stakes Reset for IRS and DOJ
Bloomberg Law, DOJ Tax’s Dissolution Forces a High-Stakes Reset for IRS and DOJ: With the Department of Justice’s Tax Division now formally dissolved, US tax enforcement is entering a new era. Given the Division’s central role in maintaining the delicate balance between voluntary compliance and effective enforcement—a balance that underpins the entire tax system—a post-mortem
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Can AI Help Us Find God?
The Free Press: Can AI Help Us Find God?, by Tyler Cowen (George Mason): Just as artificial intelligence is changing every other part of our lives, so it is changing religion. Spiritual leaders have taken note: Pope Leo XIV has warned of how AI could deaden our emotional lives. The Mormon church, by contrast, has embraced AI as
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God and Country: Upholding Faith, History, and National Identity
Christianity Today, Love Thy Dead-for-200-Years Neighbor, by Daniel K. Williams (Ashland University); Author, The Search for a Rational Faith: Reason and Belief in the History of American Christianity (2026)): In one of his dark epistles, the devil Screwtape tells his nephew Wormwood that Satan has managed to deceive humanity by convincing scholars to adopt the
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Things Worth Remembering: The Poem That Outlived the Holocaust
The Free Press: Things Worth Remembering: The Poem That Outlived the Holocaust, by Douglas Century: As a young woman, [Hannah Senesh] wrote poems inspired by the beauty of her new home [Caesarea, the ancient Roman capital of Judaea—today, a stunning national park in Israel.]. Her most famous poem, written in 1942 when she was 21,
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Weinberger: Texas and Florida Make a Smart Move on Legal Education
Washington Post Op-Ed: Texas and Florida Make a Smart Move on Legal Education, by Lael Weinberger (George Mason): The Texas Supreme Court announced this month that the court itself, not the American Bar Association, which has held near monopoly control of American legal education, would decide which law schools qualify graduates for the Texas bar. On [January 15th], Florida followed
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Mazur: Modernizing the IRS in the Age of AI
Orly Mazur (SMU), Modernizing the IRS in the Age of AI, 45 Va. Tax Rev. 182 (2025): Artificial intelligence (AI) offers powerful tools for modernizing tax administration, from automating audits and improving fraud detection to enhancing taxpayer services. But if deployed prematurely, AI risks entrenching the very flaws it aims to fix. The Internal Revenue