Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Faith
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This Week’s Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Legal Education: Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), BigLaw Associate Compensation Soars To $240k for 1st Years, $550k For 8th Years Law360, Foley & Lardner Is Third Law Firm To Rescind Offer To Incoming Associate Due To Anti-Israel Comments Tallahassee Democrat, The Case For And Against Keeping Donna Adelson In Jail Before Her Trial In Dan Markel's Murder…
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The Liberal Arts: Truth U, Social Justice U, Or Jesus U?
Christianity Today Op-Ed: The Christian Liberal Arts Tradition Can Appeal to Christians and Non-Christians Alike, by Joseph Claire (Dean, College of Humanities, George Fox University) (adapted from his chapter in The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education (2023)): College and university professors in the liberal arts (humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences) are…
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NY Times Op-Ed: Conservative Church Critics Of Pope Francis Get Fired, While Progressive Critics Get Sternly Worded Letters
New York Times Op-Ed: Pope Francis Tries to Settle Accounts, by Ross Douthat: For years now, Pope Francis’ governance of the Roman Catholic Church has been seemingly designed to drive the church’s conservative and liberal wings ever further apart. Thus the persistent question hanging over his pontificate: How will he hold this thing together? By…
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BYU, Catholic, Cumberland, Liberty, Notre Dame, And Pepperdine Deans Support ABA’s Proposed Free Speech Accreditation Standard, But Object To Extra Burden Placed On Faith-Based Law Schools
Following up on my previous post, ABA Council Unanimously Votes To Send Law School Free Speech Accreditation Standard To House Of Delegates For Final Approval In February: Law.com, ABA Council Sends 'Academic Freedom' Proposal to Hpuse of Delegates: The Council of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted to…
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WaPo Op-Ed: At 33, I Knew Everything. At 69, I Know Something Much More Important
Washington Post Op-Ed: At 33, I Knew Everything. At 69, I Know Something Much More Important., by Anne Lamott (Author, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (2024)): Today I woke up old and awful in every way. I simultaneously cannot bear the news and cannot turn it off: It’s cobra hypnosis — Gaza, Israel, the shootings…
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What Does It Profit A Christian To Protect An Institution But Lose Their Soul?
Russell Moore (Editor in Chief, Christianity Today), What Does It Profit a Christian to Protect an Institution but Lose Their Soul? (adapted from Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (2023)): The late pastor Eugene Peterson, in a letter to his son, also a pastor, wrote that the primary problem for the Christian…
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Christians Can’t Fix The Israel-Hamas War
Christianity Today, Christians Can’t Fix the Israel-Hamas War: Jesus could end this crisis. His followers almost certainly can’t. … We cannot fix this crisis, no matter how faithful, factual, and fervent we are. This bears saying, I think, for two reasons. One is our modern habit of “awareness,” as in, I am posting this article on Facebook…
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WaPo: Why Thomas Jefferson Hated Thanksgiving
Washington Post, Did Thomas Jefferson hate Thanksgiving?: Thanksgiving didn’t become an annual national holiday until the days of Abraham Lincoln, but at the time of the nation’s founding, religious feasts (and fasts) of thanksgiving were a regular thing. Both the Continental Congress and Gen. George Washington declared days of public thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War…
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A Wall Street Journal Thanksgiving
Wall Street Journal editorial, The Desolate Wilderness: Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof: So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their…
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NY Times Op-Ed: Atheism, Western Liberalism, UFOs, And Christianity
New York Times Op-Ed: Where Does Religion Come From?, by Ross Douthat: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim critic of Islamic fundamentalism and longtime champion of Enlightenment liberalism, has announced that she now calls herself a Christian — a conversion that she attributes to a twofold realization. First, that atheistic materialism is too weak a base upon which…
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Was Abraham Lincoln A Christian?
Following up on my previous post, Abraham Lincoln’s Use Of The Bible In His Second Inaugural Address: Christianity Today Book Review: America’s ‘First Evangelical President’ Might Not Have Been a Christian at All, by Robert Tracy McKenzie (Wheaton College), (reviewing Gordon Leidner, Abraham Lincoln and the Bible (2023) & Joshua Zeitz, Lincoln's God: How Faith…
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American Christians And The Anti-American Temptation
Russell Moore (Editor in Chief, Christianity Today), American Christians and the Anti-American Temptation: If any political idea in American life has proven itself over the past several years, I can’t think of a better candidate than the “horseshoe theory”—the notion that, at their extremes, Left and Right bend toward each other, sometimes as to be…
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Inazu: The Lack Of Clarity And Courage In Higher Education On Hamas And Israel
Following up on last month's post, Personal Statements On Hamas And Israel: John Inazu (Washington University; Google Scholar), The Lack of Clarity and Courage in Higher Education: Statements and silence about events in Israel and Gaza. The day after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill penned an essay in which he referred to the…
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Brunson: Can Churches Invest Funds Members Give Believing They Will Be Used For Good Works?
Samuel D. Brunson (Loyola-Chicago; Google Scholar), Mormon Lawsuits and Tithing: Can Churches Just Invest Funds Members Believe Are for Charity?: Three men have filed a lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — also known as the LDS, or Mormon church — and its investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors Inc. The men, at least one…
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Department Of Education Imposes Largest Fine In History On America’s Largest Christian College; Was It Targeted By Biden Administration?
Following up on last month's post, Nation's Largest Christian University Says Biden Administration Is Unjustly Targeting It: U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Education Office of Federal Student Aid Fines Grand Canyon University $37.7 Million for Deceiving Thousands of Students: The U.S. Department of Education (Department) office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) today announced…
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Chodorow: Speaker Mike Johnson Wants To Unleash Ministers On Politics
Following up on last Sunday's post, The Christian Faith Of Speaker Of The House Mike Johnson: Adam Chodorow (Arizona State; Google Scholar), Mike Johnson Wants to Unleash Ministers on Politics: If the new speaker of the House goes after the Johnson Amendment (no relation!), it will be bad for elections and religion. With the unexpected rise…
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WSJ Op-Ed: Amazing Grace — A Hymn For The World’s Heart
Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: ‘Amazing Grace’ Review: A Hymn for the World’s Heart, by Priscilla M. Jensen (reviewing James Walvin (University of York), Amazing Grace: A Cultural History of the Beloved Hymn (2023)): “Amazing grace,” intoned the eulogist, and repeated it. He began to sing: “how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me,”…
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WaPo Op-Ed: It’s Good to Remember — We Are All On Borrowed Time
Washington Post Op-Ed: It’s Good to Remember: We Are All on Borrowed Time, by Anne Lamott (Author, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (2024)): Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged, white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the only similarity. At the Safeway sushi bar during lunchtime, I…
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Vatican Synod Ends With Divide Over Women Deacons And LGBTQ+; ‘Catholics Need Answers, Not Questions’
Washington Post, Vatican Synod Ends With Divide Over Women Deacons and LGBTQ+: Days before the start of the most significant Catholic gathering since the 1960s, Pope Francis dropped a theological bomb. In a reply to conservative bishops concerned about his openness to the LGBTQ+ community, the 86-year-old pope effectively said he could envision priests, on…
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The Christian Faith Of Speaker Of The House Mike Johnson
New York Times, For Mike Johnson, Religion Is at the Forefront of Politics and Policy: The new House speaker has put his faith at the center of his political career, and aligned himself with a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that some describe as Christian nationalism. In the moments before he was to face a…
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Inazu: Learning From Failure
John Inazu (Washington University; Google Scholar), Learning from Failure: Earlier this month, I highlighted a day I spent with a group of medical professionals at Mayo Clinic. One striking aspect of the formal and informal discussions were references to publicly sharing failures. For example, one medical school holds an annual session where senior physicians share their failure stories, which…
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Federal Judge: Religious Schools Have The Right To Exemption From State Pronoun Policies
Eugene Volokh (UCLA; Google Scholar), Do Religious Schools Have a Right to Exemption from State's Pronoun Policies?: From Friday's opinion by Judge Daniel D. Domenico (D. Colo.) in Darren Patterson Christian Academy v. Roy … : "[T]he First Amendment protects an individual's right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and…
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The Surprising Rebirth Of Belief In God: Why New Atheism Grew Old And Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again
Following up on last Sunday's post, America Doesn’t Need More God. It Needs More Atheists.: Christianity Today, Secular Figures Are Giving Faith a Second Look (reviewing Justin Brierley, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again (Foreword by N. T. Wright) (2023)): On one…
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BYU Law School’s 50-Year Story: Giving Graduates Courage To Be Religious In The Legal Profession
Deseret News, Part of BYU Law’s 50-Year Story Is Giving Young Lawyers Courage to be Religious in Their Profession: On the very first day the law was taught at Brigham Young University in 1973, a professor stood up and said the law is not like a great pitcher of water you drink in law school.…
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Personal Statements On Hamas And Israel
April 15, 2024 will mark the 20-year anniversary of TaxProf Blog. In my over 50,000 posts during that time, I have tried to dispassionately share interesting and important news and information on tax and legal education (and, recently on Sundays, faith) from a variety of perspectives (with an occasional post about my family and my…