Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Political News
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Book of the Week
Due out June 9, this upbeat tome from former State Senator and co-founder of The States Project, Daniel Squadron, enourages legal reformers to focus on state governments as the most fertile source of progressive change as we head into our next 250 years. I’m curious how Squadron feels even the most savvy state can achieve…
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DOJ Independence
In the week when our President fired the Attorney General amidst speculation that her sin was failure to more aggressively prosecute his political enemies, it’s worth looking back on a remarkable speech from April 1940 given by Attorney General (and later Supreme Court Justice) Robert H. Jackson appropriately titled The Federal Prosecutor. Hat tip to…
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Ilya Somin Prevails in Tariffs Case
Congrats to Ilya Somin, Professor of Law at George Mason who led the charge in litigation leading to today’s Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Roberts invalidating President Trump’s efforts to use the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose broad tariffs worldwide. Prof. Somin’s account on the Volokh Conspiracy is here. The Court’s…
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Faculty under Surveillance
NYTimes reports faculty across the country becoming increasingly concerned about university and government surveillance of classroom comments and syllabi in an effort to enforce political agendas from above. The full report is here
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Open Letter from Minnesota Law Faculty
72 Members of the University of Minnesota Law Faculty have signed an Open Letter expressing horror over federal agents’ killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The letter proclaims our colleagues to be “deeply disturbed by the daily lawlessness and brazen abuses of power by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border…
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Book of the Week
I missed this book when it appeared in 2024 (sounds longer ago today than it did on Wednesday), but I’m reading it now and it’s a treat. What Laura Field does so elegantly in describing the intellectual history of today’s New Right in Furious Minds, John Ganz does equally well identifying origins of today’s turmoil…
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Amicus Brief Decisive?
Adam Liptak’s NYTimes story, linked below, carefully explains how Georgetown Law Professor, Marty Lederman’s amicus brief may have provided the key argument leading the Supreme Court to put a pause on President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Illinois. Who says legal scholars can’t make a difference? Whether one agrees with Marty’s argument or…
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Book of the Week
Former Faculty member at Rhodes College, Georgetown, and American University, Laura K. Field has done all of us a great service in her new book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. Political leaders and pundits everywhere have decried many excesses of the current Administration in Washington. Now Dr. Field, a fellow in…
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Levi’s Heir in Congress Pushes End to Tax Loophole for Ultrarich
Bloomberg: One of the wealthiest House Democrats will propose a bill Thursday that would edit the tax code to make it harder for ultrarich Americans to avoid paying taxes.
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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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Academic Freedom
Five law professors with widely divergent views on politics and constitutional law have penned an op-ed in USA today arguing that universities must reject the compact proposed by the Trump Administration if they are to be true to the academic mission. Worth a read, here. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-11-20/college-university-trump-law-professors-compact-opinion
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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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Education Dept. Finalizes PSLF Rule Limiting Who Gets Forgiveness
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program rule finalized by the U.S. Department of Education will bar employees of employers that the department determines have “a substantial illegal purpose” from accessing loan forgiveness, with some examples including immigration/civil-rights violations, supporting terrorism, and child trafficking. Critics argue the rule is vague, could be used politically, and…
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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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Professor Allows Students to Cite CNN, But Not Fox News
Inside Higher Ed: A Professor vs. Fox News: Students in a political science class at West Liberty University were given an assignment recently to keep a "politics journal" in which they would record their reactions to various articles they had selected. The instructor at the West Virginia public institution included some possible news sources, such…
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96% of Political Donations From Ivy League Faculty & Staff Went to Obama
CampusReform.org: 96% of Political Donations From Ivy League Faculty & Staff Went for Obama: From the eight elite schools, $1,211,267 was contributed to the Obama campaign, compared to the $114,166 given to Romney. The highest percentage of Obama donors came from Brown and Princeton, with 99% of donations from faculty and staff going towards his…
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Estrich: I Did Not Vote for Obama to Raise My Taxes
Susan Estrich (USC; National Campaign Manager, Dukakis for President), The Mandate To Raise Taxes on the “Rich”: Within days of winning the election, President Obama announced that his victory gave him a mandate to raise taxes on the "rich." Come again? This was a two-and-a-half-point election. It reflected a painfully divided electorate. The only mandate…
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Romney Haunted by Missing Tax Returns as Campaign Draws to Close
Huffington Post: Mitt Romney Haunted by Missing Tax Returns as Campaign Draws to Close: As the GOP presidential candidate faced pressure over the past year to release more financial information, it was widely presumed that at some point he would buckle and follow a tradition started by his father, who released 12 years of tax…
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Economic Effects of the Obama and Romney Tax Plans
Tax Foundation: A Comparison of the Long-Term Economic Effects of the Obama and Romney Tax Plans: Over the past several weeks, Tax Foundation economists have published a series of studies that analyze the long-term economic and distributional effects of the tax plans outlined by President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. These comprehensive assessments were…
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Dems, GOP Trade Barbs After CRS Pulls Report on Tax Rates and Economic Growth
New York Times: Nonpartisan Tax Report Withdrawn After GOP Protest: The Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report [Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945 (R42729) (Sept. 14, 2012), by Thomas L. Hungerford] that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of…
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Law Profs: Obama 72%, Romney 19%
Law Profs back President Obama over Mitt Romney 72% to 19%, according to Brian Leiter's poll. Update #1: Brian Leiter closed the poll with 420 votes cast and a final tally of Obama 69%, Romney 22%. See The Law Professors Have Spoken: I'm impressed (or distressed) by the strong showing for the Republican, and surprised…
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Calvin Johnson ‘Skeptical’ of Mitt Romney’s Taxes
Huffington Post: Tax Expert Calvin Johnson 'Skeptical' Of Mitt Romney's Taxes: A respected tax attorney and deficit hawk wrote a letter to the editor of Tax Notes on Monday saying that, "There is good reason to be skeptical" of Mitt Romney's claim to have paid all the taxes he legally owes. The letter, by University…
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Romney Benefits From Zeroed-Out CRUT With Mormon Church
Bloomberg: Romney Avoids Taxes via Loophole Cutting Mormon Donations, by Jesse Drucker: In 1997, Congress cracked down on a popular tax shelter that allowed rich people to take advantage of the exempt status of charities without actually giving away much money. Individuals who had already set up these vehicles were allowed to keep them. That…
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Johnson: Romney Tax Plan Doesn’t Add Up, Helps Wealthy Too Much
Austin American-Stateman op-ed: Romney Tax Plan Doesn’t Add Up, Helps Wealthy Too Much, by Calvin H. Johnson (Texas): Mitt Romney has aggressively promised large tax cuts for the richest taxpayers. President Barack Obama opposes them. Romney has simultaneously promised not to increase the deficit or increase middle class tax, but he has not specified what…