Author: Sloan Speck
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Toronto Law’s Laptop-Free Classrooms Have an AI Twist—And Some Students Push Back
The University of Toronto’s Jackman Faculty of Law has announced a framework for laptop-free classrooms. The framework is not a blanket ban. Reporting on an e-mail to students elaborates: The framework we have adopted is intended to support students in classes where instructors have chosen to go laptop-free, to set expectations and provide consistency. This…
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Heilbrun: Political Power and the Global Expansion of the Value-Added Tax
Guy Heilbrun (King’s Coll. London, Dept. Pol. Econ.), Political Power and the Global Expansion of the Value-Added Tax, Eur. J. Pol. Rsch. (forthcoming 2026): How does political power shape tax collection? This article addresses this question by focusing on the most prominent [international] fiscal phenomenon of the recent decades—the rise of the value-added tax (VAT).…
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Testing the Limits of Neoclassical Tax-Mobility Arguments
When mobility is global for people and capital, local policy may matter more. Under a strong version of the Tiebout hypothesis, households sort among jurisdictions according to their preferred mix of tax obligations and public benefits. Capital may operate similarly, as stocks flow to seek the highest rates of after-tax return. And when wealthy individuals…
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There May Be a Billion-Dollar Tax Play Hidden in the LA Lakers Sale, and It Probably Won’t Happen
The Los Angeles Lakers are changing hands again. Less than a year after Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter acquired control of the team in a transaction valuing the Lakers at $10 billion, a group led by venture capitalist Josh Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly has agreed to acquire the franchise at a…
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Does Legal Education Ignore Class?
In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay, Jon A. Shields (Claremont McKenna, Dept. Govt.) and Corey Tazzara (Scripps Coll., Dept. Hist.) ask whether universities teach about social class. Their answer: largely no, especially compared to universities’ curricular attention to race and gender. What are Shields and Tazzara’s findings, and how might they apply to legal…
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Azam: The United States, China, and the OECD-UN Rivalry in Global Tax Governance
Rifat Azam (Reichman U.), The United States, China, and the OECD-UN Rivalry: Asymmetric Regime Complexity in Global Tax Governance, 120 Am. J. Int’l L. 445 (2026): This Article argues that international tax law has developed the characteristics of an asymmetric regime complex; contests over its normative content are playing out simultaneously in the OECD and…
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The Court of International Trade Upholds Trump’s Suspension of the De Minimis Tariff Exemption
On Thursday, August 13, the Court of International Trade (CIT), in a per curiam decision, upheld the Trump Administration’s suspension of an $800 de minimis exemption from duties and import taxes. The decision is Axle of Dearborn, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, Slip Op. 26-94, Court No. 25-00091 (Ct. Int’l Trade Aug. 13, 2026). The…
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SSRN Review & Roundup: Speck Reviews Haneman’s Cryonic Trusts and the Architecture of Indefinite Control
This week, Sloan Speck (Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Victoria J. Haneman (Georgia; Google Scholar), Cryonic Trusts and the Architecture of Indefinite Control (July 16, 2026). Hard cases may make bad law in the litigation sense, but they often shed light on important dynamics and themes in the transactional context. In an engaging…
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View from Practice: Goldstein Sentencing and Appeal
The trial is over. The sentence is in. The appeal has begun. On July 24, 2026, Tom Goldstein, superstar Supreme Court advocate and founder of SCOTUSblog, was sentenced to six years in federal prison following his conviction on nine tax counts and three mortgage fraud counts. What explains Goldstein’s sentence? What are Goldstein’s prospects on…
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DeStefano: How Lawyers Can Add Value in the Age of AI
Michele DeStefano (Miami; visiting at Harvard Law School), How Lawyers Can Add Value in the Age of AI, The Practice (July/Aug. 2026):
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Bozio et al.: Does Tax-Benefit Linkage Matter for the Incidence of Payroll Taxes?
Antoine Bozio (Paris Sch. Econ.), Thomas Breda (Paris Sch. Econ.), Julien Grenet (Paris Sch. Econ.) & Arthur Guillouzouic (Aix-Marseille Sch. Econ.), Does Tax-Benefit Linkage Matter for the Incidence of Payroll Taxes?, 93 Rev. Econ. Stud. 1536 (2026):
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Iselin & Nunn: How Potential AI Futures Would Play Out in the Current Tax System
John Iselin (Yale Budget Lab) & Ryan Nunn (Yale Budget Lab), How Potential AI Futures Would Play Out in the Current Tax System, Yale Budget Lab (July 20, 2026):
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SSRN Review & Roundup: Saito Reviews Gordon’s Tax and the Law of Market Cycles
This week, Blaine Saito (Ohio State) reviews Jeff Gordon (Vanderbilt), Tax and the Law of Market Cycles (July 28, 2026). One of the major goals of economic policy is to allow for economic growth while limiting certain volatility. Since the 2008 financial crisis, finance has increasingly recognized that risk has to be viewed at the…
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Tax Panels at the 2026 SEALS Annual Conference
The 2026 Southeast Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Conference concluded today on Amelia Island. The schedule included two tax panels. Details below the fold.
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After Raising Associate Salaries, Milbank Announces Summer Bonuses
In June, BigLaw firm Milbank LLP announced an increase in its lockstep associate salary scale. In July, Milbank announced further compensation news: it will pay 2026 summer bonuses to associates on the same schedule as in 2024 and 2025. This compensation news meshes well with this spring’s Am Law 100 analysis, which found broad increases…
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Pratt: Who Defines Public Policy for Charitable Organizations?
Garrett Pratt (Tennessee, Harmon Sch. Bus.), Who Defines Public Policy for Charitable Organizations? (July 27, 2026):
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WSJ: Is That College Scholarship Taxable?
Laura Saunders, Wall Street Journal, Is That College Scholarship Taxable? What Parents Need to Know Before Fall (July 24, 2026): [M]many colleges and universities are required to send Form 1098-T both to students and the IRS. Box 1 has qualified tuition and expenses paid by or on behalf of the student. Box 5 gives the…
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SSRN Review & Roundup: Endean Reviews Calderón Gómez & Kane’s Pigou Goes Abroad
This week, Jon Endean (Brooklyn) reviews a new work by Luís C. Calderón Gómez (Cardozo) & Mitchell Kane (NYU), Pigou Goes Abroad, __ U.C. Davis L. Rev. __ (forthcoming). Pigouvian taxes have had a bit of a renaissance in the literature lately. They are cited—often approvingly—as a useful tool by which a government can help…
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Fraser: An Annotated California Billionaire Tax Act
Erin Fraser, a former student, has created an annotated version of California’s proposed 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, one of two major “tax-the-rich” measures that are on the ballot for 14% of Americans this November. Fraser’s accessible website—with cross-references, drafters’ comments, and clearly identified AI summaries, among other features—is a marked upgrade over the State of…
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The NextGen UBE Launches Next Week
The first NextGen Uniform Bar Examination will be administered on July 28–29, 2026 in ten jurisdictions. Best wishes to those law graduates sitting for the new exam, both for their final preparation and in the inaugural administration! Although the redesigned exam is 25% shorter than the legacy UBE, the focus appears to be more demanding:…
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Costinot & Werning: Should We Tax Trade? A Pigouvian Perspective
Arnaud Costinot (MIT) & Iván Werning (MIT), Should We Tax Trade? A Pigouvian Perspective, NBER Working Paper No. 35461 (July 2026):
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Treasury Raises Concerns About Tax-Aware Investment Products
At a Wall Street Tax Association seminar on July 21, 2026, Treasury officials discussed various strategies involving regulated investment companies in which Treasury has taken an interest. The next day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted on X about “too good to be true” investment strategies. Although Treasury did not announce formal guidance, the discussion generated…
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SSRN Review & Roundup: Harpaz Reviews Seto’s No More Tiers
This week, Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Theodore P. Seto (Loyola LA; Google Scholar), No More Tiers: Rebuilding Auditability in Partnership Taxation. Over the past decades, large partnerships have grown increasingly complex, often featuring multiple layers of ownership structures with numerous tiers. Large partnerships are rarely audited, and when audits…
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SteuerLLM: An Open-Source AI Model for German Tax Law
An international team of researchers has released SteuerLLM, am open-source, 28-billion-parameter AI model trained on German tax law materials. In a companion article, the team reports that SteuerLLM outperforms general-purpose instruction-tuned models of comparable size and, in some tests, substantially larger systems. These results suggest that domain-specific design may matter more than parameter count for…