Law Commons^™

The Control Of Avoidance: The United States Alternative, John Tiley, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article, jointly written by a British and an American academic, describes the American experience in identifying and attacking tax avoidance. The article was part of a symposium issue of the British Tax Review, published by Sweet and Maxwell, devoted to tax avoidance issues around the globe.

Critical Theory And The Loneliness Of The Tax Prof, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This essay, prepared for a symposium on critical theory and tax law, has two goals: to suggest why feminist theory and critical race theory are spreading in taxation and to discuss some dangers of that criticism. The author evaluates three examples of the new criticism: an article on critical race theory by Professors Moran and Whitford; an article on feminist statutory interpretation by Professor Handelman; and a book, Taxing Women, by Professor McCaffery.

The Apportionment Of ‘Direct Taxes’: Are Consumption Taxes Constitutional?, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

In debates about reorienting the American revenue system, nearly everyone assumes the Constitution is irrelevant. With few exceptions, the tax provisions in the original Constitution - particularly the direct-tax apportionment rule and the uniformity rule - have been interpreted to be paper tigers. And in only one major case has the Sixteenth Amendment, which excepts "taxes on incomes" from apportionment, been held to limit congressional power.

S Rejecting conventional wisdom, this Article argues that some consumption taxes would violate constitutional norms. The Article focuses on the requirement that “direct taxes” be apportioned among the states on the basis of population. …

American Indian Tribes And Secession, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Critics of American Indian law have often complained about federal interference in the internal affairs of American Indian nations. The author ponders how independent the critics really want American Indian nations to be and whether secession theory might help us think about the theory and practice of really independent American Indian nations.

Tough On Scholarship, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This series of three articles (that's why it's a trilogy, duh-h-h) chronicles the legal-academic career of one S. Breckinridge Tushingham ("Breck" for short). As the trilogy unfolds, Breck works his way up (or maybe it's down) from his first academic position to an established professorship to dean of the South Soybean (Soso) State University law school. In the process of recording his professional history, and thus memorializing it for the ages, Breck provides (probably defamatory) insights into the American legal academy.

The Unwritten Article, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

A law review article without footnotes? Unthinkable. But what about an article with only footnotes - and footnotes to footnotes? Thinkable. And here it is.

Performance Scholarship And The Internal Revenue Code, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

If we can have performance art-and we can-why not performance scholarship? This commentary suggests an entirely new scholarly emphasis for legal academics. (OK, it's not entirely new, but it's new for those of us not teaching trial practice.)

A Monologue On The Taxation Of Business Gifts, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This series of three articles (that's why it's a trilogy, duh-h-h) chronicles the legal-academic career of one S. Breckinridge Tushingham ("Breck" for short). As the trilogy unfolds, Breck works his way up (or maybe it's down) from his first academic position to an established professorship to dean of the South Soybean (Soso) State University law school. In the process of recording his professional history, and thus memorializing it for the ages, Breck provides (probably defamatory) insights into the American legal academy.

A Day In The Life Of S. Breckinridge Tushingham, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This series of three articles (that's why it's a trilogy, duh-h-h) chronicles the legal-academic career of one S. Breckinridge Tushingham ("Breck" for short). As the trilogy unfolds, Breck works his way up (or maybe it's down) from his first academic position to an established professorship to dean of the South Soybean (Soso) State University law school. In the process of recording his professional history, and thus memorializing it for the ages, Breck provides (probably defamatory) insights into the American legal academy.

Law Review Correspondence: Better Read Than Dead?, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

These essays were part of a mini-symposium, “Of Correspondence and Commentary,” published by the Connecticut Law Review. At the time, a number of prominent law reviews had begun to publish “correspondence,” shorter pieces generally commenting on work published in the reviews. Whatever they were called, however, these pieces looked an awful lot like articles, complete with footnotes, titles with colons, and other law-review-type stuff. The author used the creation of correspondence sections to ruminate on the nature of legal scholarship, as published in student-edited law reviews, and in particular to wonder whether authors were using correspondence sections as backdoor ways …

The Imaginary Connection Between The Great Law Of Peace And The United States Constitution: A Reply To Professor Schaaf, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article challenges the politically correct theory advanced in a 1989 article by Gregory Schaaf, “From the Great Law of Peace to the Constitution of the United States: A Revision of America’s Democratic Roots.” Professor Schaaf argued that large parts of the U.S. Constitution were based on the Great Law of Peace, the founding document of the Iroquois Confederacy. This article points to the lack of primary authority supporting such a counterintuitive proposition and questions the likelihood that Iroquois principles could have silently influenced American founders. Finally, the article questions whether it is desirable to try to further the status …

A Call For A New Buffalo Law Scholarship, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Those who haven't been paying attention to buffalo law should.

Commentary: Food For Thought And Thoughts About Food: Can Meals And Lodging Provided To Domestic Servants Be For The Convenience Of The Employer?, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This commentary considers one of the least important issues in tax law: whether the value of meals and lodging provided to domestic servants is excludable from the servants' gross income under section 119 of the Internal Revenue Code. Trivial though the issue is, the author goes on and on-and on, arguing that an example in the regulations under section 119, which concludes that the "business premises of the employer" requirement would be satisfied in such a situation, is misleading in its implications. It's not enough that the meals and lodging be provided on the business premises of the employer to …

The Law Review Manuscript Glut: The Need For Guidelines, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Legal academics generally publish in student-edited journals that have no sole-submission requirement, and it is common for authors to submit articles to dozens of journals at a time. As a result, law reviews are buried in manuscripts. Most manuscripts cannot even be looked at, much less evaluated, and there’s not much reason for evaluation anyway: a journal has little chance to publish any particular article. In short, the legal publication system is broken. (Indeed, given the ease and trivial cost of electronic submission - why not submit the article on artichoke law to Yale as well as So-So State? - …

The Supreme Court And The Timing Of Deductions For Accrual-Basis Taxpayers, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article examines the Supreme Court's two decisions in the late 1980s dealing with the timing of deductions, United States v. Hughes Properties (1986) and United States v. General Dynamics Corp. (1987), and finds those decisions wanting. Indeed, it is hard to understand why the Court exercised its discretionary jurisdiction twice in such a short period when the cases involved technicalities that seemed to overwhelm the generalist justices and when subsequent disputes with similar factual situations would be affected by statutory changes.

Commentary: The Extraordinary Revival Of Dred Scott, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

In a widely reprinted 1987 speech, Justice Thurgood Marshall characterized the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford as accurately reflecting the Founders' views on many subjects, including race. The author argues that Dred Scott was dead wrong on almost all counts-as many contemporaneous commentators, including Abraham Lincoln, understood. It was not helpful to our understanding of history and constitutional law for Justice Marshall to have resuscitated this horribly misguided decision.

Taxation, The Student Athlete, And The Professionalization Of College Athletics, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

It has become common to hear critics argue that big-time college athletes are being exploited by their institutions and that they should be paid fair market value for their services. This article argues that such a policy, if adopted, could have some unexpected consequences for the colleges. The traditional justification for not taxing athletic income (basically meaning, for most big-time schools, that from football and basketball) is that the participants are student athletes, that the activities are related to the colleges’ overall educational purposes, and that the athletic revenue is therefore not subject to the tax on unrelated business income. …

Monroe G. Mckay And American Indian Law: In Honor Of Judge Mckay’S Tenth Anniversary On The Federal Bench, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This essay, written in honor of Judge Monroe G. McKay's tenth anniversary as a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, considers the difficulty of justifying a separatist policy for the American Indian; examines the opinions authored by Judge McKay in American Indian law cases; and discusses the McKay opinions and the issue of separation.

Hughes Properties And General Dynamics: The Supreme Court, The All Events Test, And The 1984 Tax Act, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article discusses United States v. Hughes Properties, a 1986 case in which the Supreme Court blessed an accrual-basis taxpayer's current deduction for amounts guaranteed as payoffs on progressive slot machines but for which no winner had yet been determined. The author notes that, had the case been governed by section 461(h) of the Internal Revenue Code, as it was amended by the 1984 Tax Reform Act, the deductions would have been deferred. He speculates about the Supreme Court's willingness to decide an issue rendered moot by subsequent legislation, and ponders the effect that the decision in Hughes Properties will …

The Deduction Of Future Liabilities By Accrual-Basis Tax­Payers: Premature Accruals, The All Events Test, And Eco­Nomic Performance, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Written during the Paleozoic era, this article considers the timing of deductions by accrual-basis taxpayers. The article considers timing problems under pre-1984 prior law, where the benefit of a deduction for a future obligation could provide grossly inflated tax benefits; the limitations of the all events test as the sole determinant of timing; and the effect of statutory changes made by the Tax Reform Act of 1984, which require that a deduction be deferred until "economic performance" has occurred.

The Uneasy Justification For Special Treatment Of Like-Kind Exchanges, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article considered the traditional justifications for nonrecognition treatment for like-kind exchanges, as provided in section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, and found them wanting. The article nevertheless concluded that, even though the justifications are imperfect, section 1031 has some plausibility to it, at least as applied to traditional, simultaneous exchanges.

Note, The Standard Of Proof Of Causation In Legal Malpractice Cases, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This note argues that the use of a but for standard of causation in legal malpractice cases - i.e., that the plaintiff must show that but for the malpractice he or she would have prevailed in the underlying action - is too stringent, making recovery unreasonably difficult. The note therefore argues for implementation of a lost substantial possibility of recovery standard. This is just a student note, and an old one at that, but a lot of courts and commentators have cited it. In any event, modesty and self-restraint seem to play little role when authors are deciding what to …

The Penumbral Public Domain: Constitutional Limits On Quasi-Copyright Legislation, Aaron K. Perzanowski

Faculty Publications

This Article attempts to reconcile the breadth of the modern Commerce Clause with the notion of meaningful and enforceable limits on Congress' copyright authority under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.

The Article aims to achieve two objectives. First, it seeks to outline a general approach to identifying and resolving inter-clause conflicts, sketching a methodology that has been lacking in the courts' sparse treatment of such conflicts. Second, it applies that general framework to the copyright power in order to outline the scope of constitutional prohibitions against quasi-copyright protections. In particular, this application focuses on the federal anti-bootlegging statutes and …

The Magnificence Of The Disaster: Reconstructing The Sony Bmg Rootkit Incident, Deirdre Mulligan, Aaron K. Perzanowski

Faculty Publications

Late in 2005, Sony BMG released millions of Compact Discs containing digital rights management technologies that threatened the security of its customers' computers and the integrity of the information infrastructure more broadly. This Article aims to identify the market, technological, and legal factors that appear to have led a presumably rational actor toward a strategy that in retrospect appears obviously and fundamentally misguided.

The Article first addresses the market-based rationales that likely influenced Sony BMG's deployment of these DRM systems and reveals that even the most charitable interpretation of Sony BMG's internal strategizing demonstrates a failure to adequately value security …

Introduction: “Atrocious Judges” And “Odious” Courts Revisited, Robert N. Strassfeld

Faculty Publications

Introduction to the symposium "Judicial Independence and Judicial Accountability: Searching for the Right Baalance," Cleveland, Ohio.

Rules, Standards, And The Internal Point Of View, Dale A. Nance

Faculty Publications

The general thrust of the present discussion is that, in addition to its contribution to economizing on enforcement costs, there is a connection between the internal point of view and the aspiration to republican self-government: the greater the incidence of the former, the greater the achievement of the latter, ceteris paribus. This fact imbues the notion of a healthy legal system with a crucially normative component that goes beyond, and need not be inconsistent with, efficient social organization.

The Evolving Domestic And International Law Against Foreign Corruption: Some New And Old Ethical Dilemmas Facing The International Lawyer, Juscelino F. Colares

Faculty Publications

This article examines the origins and meaning of the Export Clause in Article I, section 9 of the United States Constitution, which provides that "[n]o Tax or duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State."

Part I of the article considers the original understanding of the Export Clause, concluding that, without the Clause, the Constitution would not have been adopted. In light of the Export Clause's significance in the constitutional structure, Part II examines the Supreme Court's decisions in United States v. International Business Machines Corp., 517 U.S. 843 (1996) (IBM), and United States v. United States Shoe …

The Ducks Stop Here? The Environmental Challenge To Federalism, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

PIn Solid Waste Association of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ("SWANCC"), the Supreme Court considered whether federal regulatory authority reaches isolated wetlands and ponds due to the potential presence of migratory birds. In rejecting such an expansive view of federal authority, the Court's majority underlined its devotion to the federalism principles enunciated in Lopez and other recent cases. The federalist majority further reiterated its support for a canon of statutory construction which holds that federal statutes will not be interpreted to intrude into state matters, such as local land-use control, absent a clear statement by Congress. …

Copyright Lochnerism, Raymond Shih Ray Ku

Faculty Publications

Part I of this essay outlines the conflict between copyright and the First amendment as well as, the complementary argument for reconciling copyright and free speech, as it has been formulated by scholars and the Supreme Court. Part II discusses what I have referred to as the Framers' copyright and the extent to which arguments based upon the Framers' intent in this area may reconcile copyright and free speech. Lastly, Part III argues that reliance upon the complementary argument to deny any role for heightened First Amendment review in copyright cases is subject to two interrelated criticisms of Lochner. By …

Note: Legal Excisions: The Rights Of Foreigners In Japan, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

This article examines various moments in the constitutional rights of foreigners in Japan. Beginning with the drafting of the Japanese Constitution, it shows how Japanese members of the drafting committee did not passively accept whatever their American counterparts “foisted” on them, but quite deliberately sculpted and limited the reach of the Constitution through word choice and selective translation. It then examines several lawsuits, from the 1970s to the 2000s, where foreigners have asserted various rights in Japanese courts. In the absence of constitutional rights, foreigners must rely on Japanese statutory law, guided by international law, to buttress their claims to …