The Best Justice System In The World, a documentary film by Suja A. Thomas (Illinois), will have its world premiere at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, on November 15 and 16 (in person) and November 16-29 (online). Tickets are available here.
Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
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The Great American Property Tax Freak Out
David Schleicher (Yale), The Great American Property Tax Freak Out:
Read moreThere has been a lot of news over the last two years, so it is understandable that neither the mass media nor the legal academy has focused on what is happening with the steady mainstay of local government finance, the property tax. While attention was elsewhere, though, the property tax has gone through a revolution, one nearly as profound as the great property tax revolt of the late 1970s and 80s that led to profound changes like California’s Proposition 13 and Massachusetts’s Proposition 2 1/2. In the last three years, a number of states have substantially reformed their property tax systems, providing huge tax benefits to owner-occupied homes and shifting the burden of paying for services like schools and police to commercial property owners (including rental apartment buildings), to other local taxes, and to state funding, which itself largely comes from sources like sales taxes and income taxes. A few, including Florida, Ohio, North Dakota, and Texas, have considered going further, either completely abandoning property taxation for owner-occupied housing or even abandoning property taxation entirely.
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Ireland’s Tax Cuts, Financed by a Corporate-Tax Windfall
As EU members face fiscal austerity under the revised Stability and Growth Pact, Ireland finds itself an outlier. In early October, Ireland’s government proposed a budget rife with household-oriented tax breaks and spending supports. On the table: lower indirect taxes on gasoline and heating fuels, increased income-tax bracket cutoffs and personal credits, enhanced housing benefits, and new preferences for individual savings and investment. The Financial Times has coverage.
What’s financing these tax cuts? Booming corporate tax receipts, which are paid overwhelmingly by foreign-owned multinationals. The proposed budget’s projections anticipate €34 billion in corporation-tax revenue in 2026 and €39 billion in 2027—a sharp climb from the €24 billion and €28 billion collected in 2023 and 2024, exclusive of Apple’s EU state-aid judgment. This dynamic, of course, is less windfall than the next step in multiple decades of strategic positioning.
But Ireland’s tax-and-spending bargain brings fiscal risks along with social dividends. Datapoints and commentary, below the fold.
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Law School Marketing: Showing Off Scholars
How to get the word out about your scholars? News releases, media access, etc. are the obvious ways. I thought that this Rutgers Law School “Legal Issues to Watch in 2026“ was an interesting approach.
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Lepore in the Chronicle: “Has Harvard Indeed Lost Its Mind?”
Jill Lepore (Harvard) has a new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (2026). The Chronicle of Higher Education has a wide-ranging interview with Lepore on ideology, artificial intelligence, and the return of mysticism. And, of course, these ideas’ implications for higher education, including Lepore’s concerns about a technology-driven decline in student-faculty connection.
But this interview’s flashy headline isn’t the bombshell. The interviewers note that Lepore “worries that Harvard specifically and higher ed broadly are aiding and abetting the diminishment of [their] own students’ intellectual capacities” by failing to address AI use thoughtfully. But Lepore also acknowledges using AI in her own historical research—where the use case is, well, extraordinarily strong. Lepore’s historian instincts show: her concerns are about intellectual culture and open conversation, rather than resistance to change over time.
Some excerpts and a link, below the fold.
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Georgetown-IRS Institute on Current Issues in International Taxation
The Georgetown-IRS Institute on Current Issues in International Taxation will take place December 15–16, 2026, at Georgetown University’s Capitol Campus in Washington, D.C. This two-day conference will bring together officials from Treasury, the IRS, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the OECD, along with leading practitioners from law firms, accounting firms, corporations, and academia, to discuss the developments shaping international tax.
Details and links, below the fold.
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Did Your School Acknowledge Hispanic Heritage Month?
What did your school do to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-October 15)? Although I did not look at every law school webpage, I kind of like UCLA Law’s webpage celebrating the month.
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Roundup: Changing Coalitions and California’s Billionaire Tax
It’s mid-October, and spending to oppose California’s proposed billionaire tax has breached $1 million per day. Some polling indicates that the ballot measure has a “slim” edge among likely voters, with a potentially significant slice of the electorate undecided. But Propositions 41 and 42—the pair of counterinitiatives to Proposition 40—also have more voter support than opposition. One thing’s clear from the polling: California voters think there are too many propositions on the ballot.
Coalitions are shifting, too. Democratic stalwarts such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, Planned Parenthood, and the California Teachers Association have opposed the billionaire tax, alongside a who’s who of actual billionaires. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Speaker of the House (and outgoing member of Congress) Nancy Pelosi “have yet to weigh in” on the issue. After years of being stretched, the political alliance between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party, which flourished during the Clinton and Obama years, may be fraying further.
A roundup of recent coverage, including an op-ed from taxprof Kim Clausing (UCLA) and quotes from taxprofs Brian Galle (UC Berkeley) and Ray Madoff (Boston College), below the fold.
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AI Response: Law Schools With the Most Graduates at Big Law Firms
I asked Microsoft Copilot to rank the law schools with the most graduates all time. Here is what it generated, which is kind of responsive:
“Law Schools Ranked by Most Graduates All Time
The most reliable public ranking for “most graduates all time” is U.S. News’ 2026 “Law Schools With the Most Graduates at Big Law Firms” list, which measures total alumni placed in full‑time, long‑term roles at firms with over 500 attorneys
US News.
Top Schools by Total BigLaw Graduates (2026 U.S. News)
- Cornell University – #1 in total graduates at big law firms
- Duke University – #2
- Columbia University – #3
- Northwestern University (Pritzker) – #4
- University of Pennsylvania (Carey) – #5
- University of Virginia – #6
- University of Southern California (Gould) – #7
- Georgetown University – #8
- New York University – #9
These rankings are based on cumulative career outcomes data, not just recent placement rates. U.S. News calculates them from each school’s reported employment statistics, focusing on graduates who secured full‑time, long‑term positions at large firms (over 500 attorneys)
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SSRN Review & Roundup: Endean Reviews Michaels’s The Bowsher Presidency
This week, Jon Endean (Brooklyn) reviews a new work by Joel Michaels (Columbia), The Bowsher Presidency, 140 Harv. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2027).
The second Trump administration has revealed an ability of the executive branch to simply ignore directives from Congress regarding spending and appropriations that it finds inconvenient. However, while the Trump administration may be more aggressive in subverting congressional directives, it is not the first administration to do that. Moreover, as Joel Michaels shows in his article, The Bowsher Presidency, the ability of the executive to get away with these actions can be partially attributed to the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision, Bowsher v. Synar.
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