Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
News
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Law School Dean Appointments and Reappointments
A flurry of law school dean appointments and reappointments have occurred over the last month. Some of these announcements have been reported before on this blog, but from April alone this includes: And significant coverage continues over the controversial appointment at the University of Kentucky of Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove over the law faculty’s objections.…
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All Those A.I. Note Takers? They’re Making Lawyers Very Nervous.
A recent piece from the New York Times. Does sharing a meeting with an AI bot/AI note taker void the attorney-client privilege, rendering otherwise privileged conversations discoverable? From the article: “In February, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the transcripts generated with the Claude…
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BigLaw and AI Legal Workflows
A sharp-eyed law student brought this to my attention: Global law firm Freshfields and Anthropic, a leading AI research and technology company, are joining forces on a multi-year agreement to accelerate AI co-innovation and firm-wide adoption and develop novel AI legal workflows. Freshfields has provided access to Claude, Anthropic’s family of frontier AI models, to…
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Home Distilling Limits in Tax Code Struck Down by Appeals Court
Laura D. Francis (Bloomberg Law): Home Distilling Limits in Tax Code Struck Down by Appeals Court The US Tax Code’s Reconstruction-era ban on home distilling is unconstitutional and can’t be enforced, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. Siding with Texas-based “certified bourbon steward” Rick Morris and other members of his Hobby Distillers Association, the US Court…
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SALLD Statement on Role of Academic Law Library Directors
The Society of Academic Law Library Directors (SALLD) has published a “Statement on the Role, Qualifications, and Institutional Protections of Academic Law Library Directors” in response to events at Yale Law School, which I posted about here. From the Statement:
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House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees to Lose Experience After Midterms
Bloomberg Law: Powerful Tax-Writing Panels to Lose Experience After Midterms High-profile retirements and competitive elections among senior tax writers will likely give the House Ways and Means Committee a new look next Congress. The Senate Finance Committee, the chamber’s counterpart to Ways and Means, only has three members who have announced their plans to retire.…
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California Bill Proposes 50% Gross Receipts Tax on Private Immigration Detention Facilities
Bloomberg Law: Immigration Facility Contractors Warn on California Tax Proposal The bill (A.B. 1633) from Assemblymember Matt Haney (D) would levy a 50% tax on gross receipts from contracts to operate private immigration detention facilities in California. There are two companies that do such work in the state, according to the bill sponsor’s office: CoreCivic Inc. and…
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Beyond the Best and Brightest
Expanding on a story in Above the Law, Judd Legum reports how Liberty Law School is openly recruiting interns for the Department of Labor with postings that suggest alignment with President Trump and hard work are all that’s necessary. Strong GPA’s not required. [Posting below.] There may be more to the story but if it’s…
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Yale Law School Terminates Library Director
From Law.com (Feb. 4, 2026): Yale Law School has terminated its library director, Femi Cadmus, allegedly due to poor morale within the library and just weeks after she filed a complaint with the Office of Institutional Equity & Accessibility over a previously conducted review of the law library. The complete story appears here. More below…
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More States Cracking Down on the Montana Vehicle Registration Tax “Loophole”
Michael J. Bologna (Bloomberg Law): More States Cracking Down on Tax Losses From Montana LLCs At least four states are developing tougher enforcement strategies against the “Montana loophole,” which encourages drivers to register expensive assets in other states to skirt their in-state sales tax and vehicle registration obligations.
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Women’s Studies Program Ends as Texas A & M Complies with New Board Policy
Texas A&M University announced the elimination of its Women’s and Gender Studies degree program and the cancellation or revision of other courses. University leadership said the decision responds to a newly adopted policy restricting how topics related to race and gender can be taught, and cited limited enrollment in the women’s and gender studies major and minor as part…
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Blank and Osofsky Selected to Conduct New Agency Legal Study
Joshua Blank (UC Irvine) and Leigh Osofsky (UNC) have been selected by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) to lead a comprehensive study of how federal agencies use “agency legal explainers” — such as FAQs, practice guides, and social media content — to improve public understanding of the laws they administer. The project…
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Reuters: Joby aims to double US output as air-taxi push gains momentum
Reuters: Joby aims to double US output as air-taxi push gains momentum: Joby Aviation (JOBY.N) said on Wednesday it would double its U.S. manufacturing capacity, as the electric aircraft maker looks to cash in on demand for air-taxis. Regulators and industry players have been accelerating efforts to bring electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft into mainstream transportation…
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Immigration Law Watch List
Concerning reports that the federal government has a “watch list” for immigration attorneys. Attorney Discovers Secret ‘Watch List’ for Immigration Lawyers, ABA Journal, December 15, 2025. See also Salvador Rivera, Attorney Uncovers ‘ICE Watch List’ of Prominent US Immigration Lawyers, WGNO, December 10, 2025; Kathryn Rubino, ICE Accidentally Publishes A ‘Watch List’ Of Immigration Lawyers,…
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Truth to Power
University of Alabama Law Professor, Joyce Vance, claps back at our President. Her words, linked below, need no embellishment. But for our purposes it’s worth noting that “Quiet Piggy” is simply unacceptable language from persons in leadership speaking to journalists seeking to discern the facts. And such demeaning talk thwarts our efforts as legal educators…
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FTC declares ABA Accreditation Monopoly
Reuters, FTC says ABA is a ‘law school accreditation monopoly’ by Karen Sloan | December 4, 2025 Dec 2 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday called the American Bar Association’s accreditation of law schools a “monopoly” that increases the cost of a law degree and limits the supply of new lawyers. The…
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OECD Corporate Tax Statistics, 2025
The OECD has released its latest data on corporate tax and the economic activities of MNEs worldwide, in its Corporate Tax Statistics 2025 Report: Corporate tax revenues have increased while statutory corporate tax rates have remained stable, according to new OECD data released today. The 2025 edition of OECD Corporate Tax Statistics shows that the share of…
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Law Profs Weigh In
Two law professors, among others, write to the NYTimes challenging David Brooks on his column, which argues that the political left developed the rhetorical and ideological strategies now being effectively, even ruthlessly, deployed by the political right. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/opinion/trump-republicans-democrats-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1k8.qcjt.HcNJx9C8nRUv&smid=url-share
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Faculty Speak Out
Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College (and former visiting professor at Yale Law School), reports that the Amherst faculty, on Oct. 24, adopted the following resolution by a vote of 102-26: in light of escalating threats to democracy and the rights of citizens and non-citizens in the United States,…
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Kaplan Survey: Another Fierce Law School Admissions Cycle Looms Large, Driven by Politics
The red-hot law school application boom, fueled by a nearly 20 percent surge in applicants last cycle, shows no signs of cooling, according to a new survey of law school admissions officers by global education company Kaplan.* A combined 90 percent said the 2025-2026 application cycle would be at least as competitive as the 2024-2025 cycle. Of…
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IRS Watchdog Report: Staff Shortage to Hit Taxpayer Service
Tax Notes has a new article today (“IRS Staff Shortage to Hit Taxpayer Service, IT Work, Watchdog Says“), based on a new report from the Treasury Inspector General For Tax Administration. The full report is here, and here is the intro to the Tax Notes piece: Deep reductions in the IRS workforce will create challenges…
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Lesson From The Tax Court: The Finality Rule For §7430 Qualified Offers
When you litigate against the IRS you may win but not prevail. That is, even though §7430(a) promises that a “prevailing party” can recover costs and attorneys fees, it’s hard to be a "prevailing party" within the meaning of the statute. If the government's ultimately losing position was substantially justified at the relevant time, the…
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Organ: A Data-Based Counternarrative To ‘The Big Lie’
Prologue Twelve months ago, on December 29, 2020, I posted a blog analyzing voting patterns in Congressional Districts in five of the six swing states that former President Trump lost. The analysis demonstrated that Trump lost largely because significant numbers of voters who voted for Republican Congressional candidates in those five states did not vote…
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At Yale Law School, A Party Invitation Ignites A Firestorm
Update: Kathleen Parker (Washington Post), Yale Law School Triggers Me (Oct. 16, 2021) David Lat, Yale Law Student Who Sent 'Trap House' Email Faces Removal As 2L Rep (Oct. 18, 2021) Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern), Yale Law School’s Bullying, Coercive Diversity Leaders (Oct. 19, 2021) Yale Daily News, Racism, Conservatism And Free Speech At Yale Law School (Oct. 20, 2021) Eugene…
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Boehner Would Accept ‘New Revenue’ Under ’Right Conditions’
Bloomberg, Boehner Would Accept New Revenue Under ’Right Conditions’ Mother Jones, John Boehner's Desperate Bluff on Taxes NBC News, Boehner Offers Tax Talks, but Outline Is Vague New York Times, Boehner Strikes Conciliatory Tone in Talk of Fiscal Cliff Politico, Boehner ‘Ready to be Led’ on Taxes Wall Street Journal, Reading the Tea Leaves on…