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TaxProf Blog

Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law

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  • Paul Caron

    2026-27 U.S. News Clinical Training Rankings

    The new 2026-27 U.S. News Clinical Training Rankings include the clinical training law programs at 185 law schools (the faculty survey had a 60% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

    RankSchool
    1Georgetown
    2American
    2NYU
    4Baltimore
    4CUNY
    4Suffolk
    4Yale
    8Maryland
    8UC-Berkeley
    8Washington University
    11Denver
    11Fordham
    11Northwestern
    11Rutgers
    15District of Columbia
    15Michigan
    15New Mexico
    15UC-Irvine
    19George Washington
    19Harvard
    19Miami
    19Minnesota
    19Stanford
    24Columbia
    24Cornell
    24Northeastern
    24UC Law SF
    24Wisconsin
    29Boston College
    29Boston University
    29Duke
    29Mitchell | Hamline
    29Tennessee
    29Tulane
    29UCLA
    36Georgia State
    36Penn
    36Seattle
    36Texas
    36University of Washington
    36Villanova
    42Albany
    42Brooklyn
    42Chicago
    42Howard
    42Pepperdine
    42South Carolina
    42St. Thomas (MN)
    42Temple
    42UNLV

    2026-27 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

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  • Jeremy Paul

    Book of the Week

    What lessons should we draw from the fact that so many of our routine ways of building legal culture (e.g. powerful appellate courts; law schools as separate parts of universities) were created when formalism was the dominant paradigm for understanding how law works? Have we fully tackled how these institutions could best function now that legal realism and its heirs (Crticical Legal Studies; Law and Economics;) have won the day? Professor Marin Roger Scordato at Catholic University says we have not, and in his ambitious, noteworthy After the Realist Revolution he takes up the challenge. Check it out.

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  • Shuyi Oei

    Hackney: Arts Tax Policy

    Philip Hackney (Pittsburgh), Arts Tax Policy: Democracy or Plutocracy?, 60 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026), U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2026-13, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6511360 

    The United States National Endowment for the Arts’ budget in 2024 was $207 million; in the same year the United States spent roughly between $2 and $3.35 billion on art through the charitable contribution deduction. Over 90% of those deductions came from people earning more than $200,000, while 65% came from those earning more than $1,000,000. Is there justification for Congress to provide charitable tax benefits including tax exemption to support arts-based nonprofit organizations this way? This Article finds no theory of justice supports this policy as currently designed. Though tax scholars typically consider factors of efficiency or equity, neither resolves this question. We need a theory of political justice. The charitable tax subsidies fail because no theory justifies allowing wealthy interests the primary say in what art the country supports, and because the current design is unlikely to fix any market failure. Underlying both failures is the neutrality principle of liberal democracy: the state should not privilege one form of the good life over another. This is a principle the tax literature has largely ignored. Though art can serve genuine democratic purposes by developing the reflective and communicative capacities citizens need for self-governance, that case requires art policy to be determined through inclusive democratic deliberation rather than wealthy donor preferences. Judged against the standard of democratic perfectionism, the current structure substitutes plutocracy for democracy in a domain where democratic deliberation is what political justice requires.

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  • Kevin R Johnson

    LSAC: 2025 1L Class Was Largest in Recent Years, but First-Gen College Grad Representation Declines Again

    The Quote of the Day from Above the Law offers much food for thought:

    This should serve as a wake-up call to everyone in legal education. This shift is particularly concerning because first-gen college graduates are a vital way to broaden who gets to be a part of the legal profession and what it means to promote access to justice throughout our society.

    —  Sudha Setty, president and the CEO of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), in comments given to the ABA Journal, concerning the decline in law school enrollment of first-generation college graduates for the second consecutive year (23.95% for the 2024 1L class and 21.6% for the 2025 1L class). This data comes from an LSAC report on law school enrollment trends from 2021 to 2025. We are now two admissions cycles removed from the Supreme Court’s 2023 landmark decision in Students for Fair Admissions, which ended affirmative action.

    Here is the LSAC post about the first gen data.

  • Jeremy Paul

    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 Professor John Q Barrett, Benjamin N. Cardozo Professor of Law at St John’s ,who maintains thejacksonlist and shared the speech with subscribers.

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  • Shuyi Oei

    Goulder: Can Consumers Recoup IEEPA Tariffs From Importers?

    Robert Goulder, Can Consumers Recoup IEEPA Tariffs From Importers? (Tax Notes Today, Int’l, April 10, 2026)

    The one-year anniversary of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs came and went without much public fanfare. The kindest remembrance was penned by columnist Oren Crass for the Financial Times, who credits Trump’s trade stance for a weaker (read: more competitive) U.S. dollar, whilst overlooking the consequences for manufacturing employment and agricultural output. (Oren Crass, “The Case for Trump’s Tariffs Looks Strong a Year On from ‘Liberation Day,’” The Financial Times, Apr. 2, 2026.) News flash: Tariffs look less rotten when we selectively ignore the adverse ripple effects.

    True, the dollar fell 11 percent against major currencies over the last year, halting a protracted bullish cycle. It’s hard to say whether that decline should be credited to high tariffs or blamed on the burgeoning fiscal deficit, coupled with Trump’s incessant pleas for interest rate cuts. (See Morgan Stanley, “The Depreciation of the Dollar,” Aug. 6, 2025.) And what about the much-maligned trade deficit? Didn’t Trump’s tariffs ease the problem, as promised? Not exactly. Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau reflects that the nation’s trade deficit for goods worsened over 2025, while the trade surplus for services strengthened. The overall value of U.S. imports exceeded that of exports by $901 billion, down insignificantly from the 2024 figure ($903 billion). (Ben Casselman and Ana Swanson, “In 2025, Trade Deficit in Goods Reached Record High,” The New York Times, Feb. 16, 2026.) Twelve months on, I struggle to identify what the American populace was liberated from . . . other than lower prices….

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  • Jeremy Paul

    Who’s Woke Now

    Elise Stefanik has penned a new book, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities, which should attract our attention, if only because it represents her attempt to build upon her widely seen performance at congressional hearings that led to departures of prominent academic leaders. But what really caused me to take notice was this review in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Alex Bronzini-Vender, who is still an undergraduate at Harvard. I’d say he’s a bit unfair to progressives in his characterization of certain ideas as “woke.” But it’s in the service of getting us to think hard about what Stefanik is doing, and its a bravura performance for someone still in college.

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  • Paul Caron

    2026-27 U.S. News Business/Corporate Law Rankings

    The new 2026-27 U.S. News Business/Corporate Law Rankings include the business/corporate law programs at 195 law schools (the faculty survey had a 47% response rate). Here are the Top 50:

    RankSchool
    1Harvard
    2Columbia
    2NYU
    2Stanford
    5Penn
    6Chicago
    7UC-Berkeley
    7UCLA
    9Virginia
    9Yale
    11Duke
    11Michigan
    13Vanderbilt
    14Cornell
    14Georgetown
    14Northwestern
    17Fordham
    17Texas
    17USC
    20BYU
    21Boston University
    21UC-Davis
    23Georgia
    23Minnesota
    25Boston College
    25Emory
    25SMU
    25Washington University
    29Florida
    29George Washington
    29North Carolina
    29Washington & Lee
    29William & Mary
    34Illinois
    34Indiana (Maurer)
    34Miami
    34Notre Dame
    34Ohio State
    34Tennessee
    34UC-Irvine
    41Arizona State
    41Colorado
    41Iowa
    41Tulane
    41UC Law SF
    41University of Arizona
    47Alabama
    47Brooklyn
    47George Mason
    47Maryland
    47Texas A&M
    47Wake Forest
    47Widener (DE)
    47Wisconsin

    2026-27 U.S. News Specialty Rankings:

    Read more
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  • Michael Hunter Schwartz

    Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Navigating the Dog Days of the Spring Semester

    I begin this post from the premise that law teachers have the best job imaginable. We have reasonable teaching loads compared, for example, to our undergraduate liberal arts colleagues, and we get to teach adult students who, for the most part, come to us motivated and willing to work hard. Nevertheless, about this time of year, at least some of our students are tired and less motivated, and many of us have worn down a bit, too. These are the dog days of the spring semester. 

    According to National Geographic, the term “dog days” or “dog days of summer” comes from a belief of the Ancient Greeks and Romans; they believed that the hot days of summer were caused by the bright star, Sirius (a/k/a “The Dog Star”), rising alongside the sun in the summer. Later explanations connected the hot weather with the tendency of dogs to lie around in the shade when it is hot out, and I am proposing the term “dog days of the spring semester” to refer to the decreased motivation of us law professors and our students. 

    What can we do about the dog days of the spring semester?

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  • Deanna Newton

    Cauble Presents “The Channels of Tax Law (Mis)Information” Today At Duke

    Emily Cauble (Wisconsin) presents The Channels of Tax Law (Mis)Information at Duke today, as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:

    This Article sheds light on a pervasive phenomenon. In a variety of contexts, third parties provide information about tax law to taxpayers. The information provided by these third parties may guide the tax planning and compliance decisions of taxpayers, some of whom may act upon the information without seeking advice from a tax professional. In some cases, the information is accurate and potentially helpful. In other cases, it is inaccurate and potentially misleading.

    This Article describes concrete examples of real estate companies and home mortgage lenders providing information about the tax consequences of home ownership; car companies delivering information about tax credits available to purchasers of electric and hybrid vehicles; sellers of other products dispensing information about associated tax credits; drugstores and other sellers of health products distributing information about health flexible spending accounts; student loan providers broadcasting information about the deduction for student loan interest; debt collectors describing to debtors the tax consequences of nonpayment; employers, schools, and pediatricians providing information about potential benefits of tax filing; and more. The collection of examples is based, in part, on information gleaned from an examination of websites of leading companies in various industries. Some of the examples are taken from cases involving contract law or consumer protection law. 

    This Article discusses several important implications that follow from an examination of these examples. First, in many cases, third parties transmit information contained in informal IRS guidance. As a result, for better or for worse, they magnify the impact of informal IRS guidance, which underscores the need to ensure that informal IRS guidance does not steer taxpayers in the wrong direction. Second, many of the examples entail information that is, in substance, less accurate for taxpayers with lower incomes, which has troubling equity implications. Third, an examination of the examples suggests the need for an evaluation of existing legal doctrine. Fourth, some of the examples represent topics that the IRS could discuss when alerting taxpayers to tax misinformation. Finally, some modifications to existing law could amplify the positive impact of helpful information.  

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