Law Commons^™

"Do Lawyers Need Economists?" Review Of Economic Transplants: On Lawmaking For Corporations And Capital Markets, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Katja Langenbucher’s outstanding book seeks to address the question of why and in what ways have lawyers been importing economic theories into a legal environment, and how has this shaped scholarly research, judicial and legislative work? Since the financial crisis, corporate or capital markets law has been the focus of attention by academia and media. Formal modelling has been used to describe how capital markets work and, later, has been criticized for its abstract assumptions. Empirical legal studies and regulatory impact assessments offered different ways forward. This excellent book presents a new approach to the risks and benefits of interdisciplinary …

Why Study Tax History?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Since the beginning of this century, John Tiley organized an annual tax history conference at Cambridge, a tradition that was continued after his death under the leadership of Peter Harris. These are the papers from the ninthCambridge Tax Law History Conference, held in July 2018. In the usual manner, the papers have been selected from an oversupply of proposals for their interest and relevance, and scrutinized and edited to the highest standard for inclusion in this prestigious series. The result is an outstanding book, with many high quality contributions to historical tax research.

Review Of Double Taxation And The League Of Nations, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Should we continue adapting the OECD Model to address tax challenges arising from digitalization of the economy or has the time come for radical reform? Sunita Jogarajan asked that question in her last study of the League of Nations' work on double taxation in the 1920s. The historical analysis provided in her book seems to suggest that the international tax regime will continue to inevitably evolve and the OECD Model can adapt. Her extensive archival research, conducted at the League of Nations Archives, the United Kingdom National Archives (London) and the Seligman Archives, Columbia University (New York), clearly demonstrates that …

Review Of The Making Of Tax Law: The Development Of The Swedish Tax System, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Imagine that a single person had been responsible for all U.S. tax reforms enacted from 1974 to 2012. That was the position of Sven-Olof Lodin, the former president of the International Fiscal Association. For more than 40 years, professor Lodin was the most influential voice in Swedish tax policy. This was not in a single, official governmental capacity, but rather as a member of more than 20 government commissions and working parties on taxation, which were responsible for all the major changes in Swedish tax law in recent decades, including the "Tax Reform of the Century" in 1991. In this …

Tax Stories And Tax Histories: Is There A Role For History In Shaping Tax Law?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

The teaching of law is usually rather ahistorical. Teachers commonly focus on current doctrine and policy debates, discarding on the "garbage pile of history" any law that has been repealed or superseded. And yet, much of law teaching is still based on reading cases. And cases are by definition historical artifacts - they arise from a specific time and place, and reflect a frequently long-gone historical context. Thus, it is hard to imagine a modern law course completely devoid of history, even if the history gets short shrift. A constitutional law course, for example, will likely include some discussion of …

If Taxpayers Can't Be Fooled, Maybe Congress Can: A Public Choice Perspective On The Tax Transition Debate, Kyle D. Logue

Reviews

In When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity , Shaviro takes the various strands of the existing literature on retroactivity and weaves them together, applying his unique combination of legal expertise, political pragmatism, and theoretical sophistication in public finance economics as well as political science. The result is a subtle, balanced, and scholarly treatise on transition relief and retroactivity that should serve as the starting point for all future research in the field. In its stated objectives, the book is admirably ambitious.

This Review will, in a broad sense, follow Shaviro's characterization of the …

Review Of Company Tax Systems, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Comparative taxation is a fascinating and frustrating subject. It is fascinating because, through the lens of tax law, one can observe how countries with very different historical and cultural traditions have grappled with similar problems and have reached solutions that have both common and disparate elements. For example, countries that start off with a schedular system for taxing different categories of income end up with near global coverage (e.g., through a "miscellaneous" schedule), and countries that adopt a global system introduce schedular elements (such as the U.S. treatment of capital gains and losses). Another example is the convergence between countries …

Review Of Successful Tax Practice, By H. C. Bickford, John W. Reed

Reviews

For some years now, those who came to the bar before federal taxes attained importance have been lamenting their unfamiliarity with the field and the consequent loss of clientele. Not a few clients have joined in the lament, often upon the stimulus of an unexpected and unnecessary tax bill. The bar is aware of the problem, and its attempts to meet it have ranged all the way from tax institutes for interested lawyers to cart-before-the-horse attempts to exclude non-lawyers from practice in the tax field. I suggest that Mr. Bickford's readable book is one of the most promising answers to …

Review Of Cases And Materials On Taxation, 2nd Ed., By P. W. Bruton, John W. Reed

Reviews

This is a better book than Professor Bruton's first edition. It is a different book, too; substantial and useful revision is apparent, not only in the selection of recent materials but also in the arrangement of those materials. As taxation casebooks go, one must agree that this is a well executed opus.