Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Scholarship
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Book of the Week
This magisterial history by University of Michigan Professor Michelle Adams, is due out in paperback in January 2026. The Containment tells the story of how the battle to desegregate the schools was effectively derailed via the Supreme Court’s decision in Milliken v. Bradley. Readers need look no further to discover why scholarship matters. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374250423/thecontainment/
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Parsons Presents “Taxing Social Data” Today at Boston College
Amanda Parsons (Colorado) presents Taxing Social Data at Boston College today at 5pm ET as part of its Tax Policy Collaborative hosted by James Repetti and Diane Ring:
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Nam Presents “Desert-Based Taxation” Today at Pepperdine
Jeesoo Nam (USC; Google Scholar) presents Desert-Based Taxation today at Pepperdine, as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series:
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Pepperdine Caruso Law Nootbaar Institute Hosts Workshop on Christian Legal Thought
On Friday, November 7, 2025, the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law held an academic workshop titled “Christian Legal Thought from the Margins.” The workshop brought together legal scholars to share their current research projects from a diverse array of fields (including bankruptcy, tax, labor, criminal law, immigration,…
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Clarke & Glogower: Tariffs and the Taxing Power: Historical Lessons for Major Questions and Nondelegation
Conor Clarke (Wash U) & Ari Glogower (Northwestern), Tariffs and the Taxing Power: Historical Lessons for Major Questions and Nondelegation, 103 Wash. U. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026):
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Raskolnikov: Taxes and Tournaments
Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia), Taxes and Tournaments, 2024 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1123:
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Clarke Presents “What Made Income Taxes Possible?” at NYU today
I am presenting “What Made Income Taxes Possible?” today at NYU’s Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium, hosted by Daniel Shaviro. The paper is coauthored with Ed Fox (Michigan Law) and Wojciech Kopczuk (Columbia Econ). Here is the abstract: Why do governments impose taxes on “income” rather than (and in addition to) other things? Large…
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Avi-Yonah, Salama, Snitz & Thomas: Boden Lecture: Taxation of Autonomous Artificial Intelligence
Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar), Lucas Brasil Salama, Herbert Snitz, and W. Robert Thomas, Boden Lecture: Taxation of Autonomous Artificial Intelligence, 108 Marq. L. Rev. 1081 (2025). This Article proposes that tax can be a useful supplement to other measures to regulate Autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AAI) and limit its potential harmful effects.
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Book of the Week
One of the great legal historians of the late 20th century (and one of my favorite teachers) is out this year with a landmark contribution for the 21st. Morton J. Horwitz’s 2025 informative and insightful book The Warren Court and the Democratic Constitution builds on his earlier work using newly available documents detailing internal Court…
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Today’s Law Panels at the 118th Annual National Tax Association Meeting
The 118th Annual National Tax Association Meeting continued today in Boston. Here are the law-related panels on the schedule for today (I count seven): Procedure, Administration, and Organization Chair: Eleanor WilkingDiscussants: Eleanor Wilking and Dan Jaqua Joshua Blank, Agency Enforcement Power and Public Internal GuidanceAudrey Cheng, Toward Doctrinal Stability: Addressing Judicial Discontent in the Tax…
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Kamin: Tax Reform After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
David Kamin (NYU), Tax Reform After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 2025 Tax Notes Today International 213-20 (November 5, 2025) The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21) and the tariffs imposed by President Trump have made progressive tax reform all the more urgent, but they have also made any such reform efforts more…
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Ozai: Beyond Economic Allegiance
Ivan Ozai (Queen’s University), Beyond Economic Allegiance, 75(4) University of Toronto L. J., 425 (2025) This article argues that the principle of economic allegiance, long regarded as the normative foundation of international tax jurisdiction, has become insufficient in the face of recent global reforms that expand the concept of nexus and fragment taxing authority. Nexus…
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118th Annual National Tax Association Conference Kicks Off in Boston Today
The 118th annual meeting of the National Tax Association has kicked off in Boston today. Here is the conference website and schedule. Congratulations to Peter Merrill, Benjamin Lockwood, and Adam Looney for organizing an impressive conference (notwithstanding the ongoing challenges of the shutdown). Here are the law-focused sessions and papers on the schedule for today:
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Mitchell: Using Transformative Learning Theory to Teach Leadership
Jane Mitchell (Brigham Young University, J. Reuben Clark Law School), “That Class Changed My Life”: Using Transformative Learning Theory to Teach Leadership, 65 Santa Clara L. Rev. ____ (2025). Abstract Since the country’s founding, the legal profession has served as a springboard for some of society’s greatest leaders. But by and large, lawyers were not trained to…
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Smith: “Abortion and State Taxes: Unexpected Parallelism”
Eric Smith (Weber State), Abortion and State Taxes: Unexpected Parallelism, 78 Okla. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026): In 2018, South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., overruled the physical presence rule, a state and local tax doctrine requiring an out-of-state vendor to be physically present in a state before being compelled to collect the state’s sales and use…
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David Cay Johnston Reviews The Second Estate, by Ray Madoff
David Cay Johnston has reviewed The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy (2025), by Ray Madoff (Boston College) in the Washington Monthly. Here are the first few paragraphs of the review (“How America’s Tax Code Built an Aristocracy“):
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Rosenberg: Revisions to the Creditability Determination in the Foreign Tax Credit Rules
Rebecca Rosenberg (University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law) has published Seismic Shifts and Stair Steps: Revisions to the Creditability Determination in the Foreign Tax Credit Rules in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Here is the abstract:
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New NBER Tax Working Papers
A number of new working papers in the National Bureau of Economic Research series may be of interest to tax academics. Here are the ones I see in the latest batch (including two by Joel Slemrod!):
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Furuseth & Li: Improper Use of Tax Treaties and Source Taxation: Policy, Practice and Beyond
Eivind Furuseth (Independent) and Jinyan Li (Osgoode), Improper Use of Tax Treaties and Source Taxation: Policy, Practice and Beyond, Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper (Oct. 20, 2025) The question of improper use of tax treaties (or treaty shopping) defies a simple or straightforward answer. The line between “proper use” and “improper use” a tax treaty…
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Thomas: Tax in the Echo Chamber
Kathleen Delaney Thomas (UNC), Tax in the Echo Chamber, available at SSRN (Oct. 1, 2025). The idea of an internet echo chamber – a metaphor first coined by Cass Sunstein – describes our tendency to surround ourselves online with people and content that reflect only our own viewpoints. Echo chambers not only promote polarization and…
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Endean Presents “Tariffs as Taxes: A Framework for Understanding Delegation of the Taxing Power” Today At Columbia
Jon Endean (Brooklyn) presents Tariffs as Taxes: A Framework for Understanding Delegation of the Taxing Power, 63 San Diego L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026), at Columbia today as part of the Davis Polk & Wardell Tax Policy Colloquium: While perhaps not obvious to the casual observer, tariffs are taxes, and, as such, they fall within…
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Alexandra Walker: The Durability of Tax Laws and Their Objectives
Alexandra Walker (NYU), The Durability of Tax Laws and Their Objectives, 80 Tax L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026):
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Christian Perspectives on the Role of the State, Justice, and Taxation
Springer has released a new edited volume, with several chapters written by law professors: Christian Perspectives on the Role of the State, Justice, and Taxation (van Brederode, ed. 2025). This book examines the historical and ongoing influence of Christian ethical thought on taxation, governance, and distributive justice. Building on themes introduced in Political Philosophy and…
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The Trump Tariffs and the Early History of the Taxing Power
As Sloan noted a few days ago, Friday was the final deadline for amicus briefs in the Trump tariff cases. I filed one of those briefs (in support of the companies challenging the Trump tariffs), alongside Jon Endean (Brooklyn), Ari Glogower (Northwestern), and Daniel Hemel (NYU). (The brief was also supported by the indefatigable students…
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Splinter: The Distribution of Capital Gains in the United States
David Splinter (Joint Committee on Taxation) has posted The Distribution of Capital Gains in the United States: A Comment: National income is estimated based on a consistent treatment of economic income flows. Research on the distribution of income (Piketty, Saez, and Zucman 2018; Auten and Splinter 2024) uses these agreed upon national income concepts. Notably,…