Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Book Club
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Innocent Spouse: A Memoir
Innocent Spouse: A Memoir (Crown, May 10, 2011), by Carol Ross Joynt: Carol Ross Joynt was a successful television producer in Washington, D.C. Her husband, Howard, owned Nathans, a legendary restaurant in Georgetown. From an outsider’s perspective, Carol and Howard lived a fairy-tale life—spending weekends at their Chesapeake Bay estate, rubbing shoulders with New York’s and…
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Book Review: How FDR Used the IRS to Silence Critics of the New Deal
Red State Book Review, The Sword of the IRS (reviewing New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America (2008), by Burton W. Folsom, Jr. (Hillsdale College)): “My father,” Elliott Roosevelt observed of his famous parent, “may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.”…
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Regan: Taxes and Death — The Rise and Demise of Jenkens & Gilchrist
Milton C. Regan (Georgetown) has published Taxes and Death: The Rise and Demise of an American Law Firm, in 52 Studies in Law, Politics and Society: Law Firms, Legal Culture, and Legal Practice 107 (Austin Sarat, ed., 2010). Here is the abstract: Misconduct by lawyers in law firms is often attributed to pressures from increasing competition for…
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Staudt: How Courts Fund National Defense in Times of Crisis
Tax Prof Nancy Staudt (Northwestern; moving to USC) has published The Judicial Power of the Purse: How Courts Fund National Defense in Times of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, May 1, 2011): Congress and the president are not the only branches that deal with fiscal issues in times of war. In this innovative book, Nancy…
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The Pale King
The Pale King, an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace (the author of Infinite Jest), was published posthumously on April 15, 2011. Here is the publisher’s description: The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so…
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A Practitioner’s Guide to Innocent Spouse Relief
The ABA has published A Practitioner’s Guide to Innocent Spouse Relief, by Robert B. Nadler (Tennessee taxpayer Project): Thousands of Innocent Spouse claims are filed each year — this comprehensive and concisely written guide provides you with the framework for representing your client successfully. In straightforward language, the Guide takes you step-by-step through the Innocent Spouse…
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Tax Expenditures: State of the Art
The Canadian Tax Foundation has published Tax Expenditures: State of the Art (Lisa Philipps, Neil Brooks & Jinyan Li (all of Osgoode Hall), eds.) (2011): Over the last 40 years, tax expenditure analysis has reshaped the way policy makers and practitioners around the world think about the design of tax systems. This volume presents recent research on tax expenditures…
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Foundation Press Publishes Indian Law Stories
Foundation Press has published Indian Law Stories (2011), by Carole E. Goldberg (UCLA), Kevin K. Washburn (Dean, New Mexico) & Philip P. Frickey (UC-Berkeley): Indian Law Stories penetrates the often complex and unfamiliar doctrine of federal Indian law, exposing the raw conflicts over sovereignty and property that shaped legal rulings. Fifteen distinguished authors describe gripping cases involving Indian nations…
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Soled Reviews Regulation of Tax Practice
Jay A. Soled (Rutgers Business School) reviews Regulation of Tax Practice (LexisNexis, 2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael B. Lang (Chapman), part of our Graduate Tax Series, in 131 Tax Notes 201 (Apr. 11, 2011) Aside from the clarity of organization and careful selection of case material, the textbook’s fundamental strength undoubtedly rests in its practical,…
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Treasure Islands: Offshore Banking and Tax Havens
Nicholas Shaxson has published Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens (Palgrave Macmillan, April 12, 2011): While the United States experiences recession and economic stagnation and European countries face bankruptcy, experts struggle to make sense of the crisis. Nicholas Shaxson, a former correspondent for the Financial Times and The Economist, argues that…
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Graetz: The End of Energy
Tax Prof Michael Graetz (Columbia) has published The End of Energy The Unmaking of America’s Environment, Security, and Independence (MIT Press, 2011): Americans take for granted that when we flip a switch the light will go on, when we turn up the thermostat the room will get warm, and when we pull up to the…
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Foundation Press Publishes Partnership Income Taxation
Foundation Press has published the Fifth edition of the popular Partnership Income Taxation as part of its Concepts & Insights Series of books for students. This edition is the first since the retirement of the original author, Alan Gunn (Notre Dame). William H. Lyons (Nebraska) has joined James R. Repetti as a co-author of the book. Here is the…
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McGinnis Reviews The Legal Academy and an Overlawyered America
John O. McGinnis (Northwestern) reviews the new book by Walter Olson (Cato Institute), Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America (2011) in today’s Wall Street Journal: Law schools wield more social influence than any other part of the American university. To what effect? … One of his themes is that law professors serve the interests of the…
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The VAT Reader: What a Federal Consumption Tax Would Mean for America
Tax Analysts today published The VAT Reader: What a Federal Consumption Tax Would Mean for America. The 352-page book is free, avaialable in both pdf and hard copy. The contributors are: Martin A. Sullivan, Introduction: Getting Acquainted With VAT (p.7) Kathryn James, Exploring the Origins and Global Rise of VAT (p.15) Sijbren Cnossen, A VAT Primer for Lawyers,…
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Call for Tax Book Reviews: Michigan Law Review
The Michigan Law Review is soliciting book reviews for its 2012 Survey of Books Related to the Law: The Michigan Law Review publishes an Annual Survey of Books dedicated to book reviews. Book reviews are not included in any other issue of the Michigan Law Review. The Survey includes reviews of books published in the current…
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McMahon: Taxing Tax Expenditures?
Martin J. McMahon Jr. (Florida) has published Taxing Tax Expenditures?, 130 Tax Notes 775 (Feb. 14, 2011): This report is a chapter from a coming book, The Proper Tax Base; Structural Fairness From an International and Comparative Perspective: Essays in Honor of Paul McDaniel, edited by Yariv Brauner and Martin J. McMahon Jr. After briefly recounting the historical…
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Brooks Presents The Case for Progressive Taxes Today at Toronto
Neil Brooks (Osgoode Hall Law School) presents The Case for Progressive Taxes: One More Time, with Feeling at the University of Toronto today as part of its James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series. Here is the abstract: This presentation will review the central arguments made in a book I co-authored with Linda McQuaig, The Trouble with…
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The First Open-Source Tax eCasebook: The Ethics of Tax Lawyering
I previously blogged eLangdell, the open-access casebook project developed by CALI (the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction). The first tax (and first ethics) entry is The Ethics of Tax Lawyering, by Michael Hatfield (Texas Tech): This chapter’s objective is to raise interesting tax ethics issues in practical contexts. There are 43 notes and questions to prompt and guide discussions, and…
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Barton: The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System
Benjamin H. Barton (Tennessee) has published The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System (Cambridge University Press, Dec. 31, 2010): Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law. There are…
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Are Our Students Academically Adrift?
Richard Arum (NYU) & Josipa Roksa (University of Virginia), Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, Jan. 18, 2011): Almost everyone strives to go [to college], but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion…
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Book Review: Calvin Johnson’s Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
Alan Gibson (California State University, Department of Political Science) reviews the book by Tax Prof Calvin Johnson (Texas), Righteous Anger at the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders’ Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 2005), in 17 Law & Politics Book Review 644 (2010): University of Texas Law Professor Calvin Johnson’s provocative but deeply flawed book Righteous…
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Wood: Family Tax Law
Richard J. Wood (Capital) has published Family Tax Law (Vanderplas Publishing, 2010): Family Tax Law is organized around family law topics that also raise serious tax law issues. Its goal is to serve both the family law and tax law academic communities by providing a text book that links family law issues with related tax…
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Foundation Press Publishes Statutory Interpretation Stories
Foundation Press has published Statutory Interpretation Stories, by William N. Eskridge, Jr. (Yale), Philip P. Frickey (UC-Berkeley) & Elizabeth Garrett (USC): Statutory Interpretation Stories tackles the leading cases in the emerging statutory interpretation canon, as reflected in the casebooks. For each case, the leading scholar provides historical background (including details about the participants), a procedural history…
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Tax Policy, Women and the Law
Ann Mumford (Queen Mary University of London) has published Tax Policy, Women and the Law: UK and Comparative Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2010): Tax policy frequently targets the choices that women face in many aspects of their lives. Decisions regarding working away from home, having children, marrying, registering a partnership or cohabiting with a partner all…
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Foundation Press Publishes Women and the Law Stories
Foundation Press has published Women and the Law Stories, by Elizabeth M. Schneider (Brooklyn) & Stephanie M. Wildman (Santa Clara): This book examines landmark cases establishing women’s legal rights, offering accounts of the litigants, history, parties, strategies, and theoretical implications. It will enrich any law school course and can serve as a text for a course…