Law Commons^™

A Critical Research Agenda For Wills, Trusts And Estates, Bridget J. Crawford, Anthony C. Infanti

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The law of wills, trusts, and estates could benefit from consideration of its development and impact on people of color; women of all colors; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals; low-income and poor individuals; the disabled; and nontraditional families. One can measure the law’s commitment to justice and equality by understanding the impact on these historically disempowered groups of the laws of intestacy, spousal rights, child protection, will formalities, will contests, and will construction; the creation, operation and construction of trusts; fiduciary administration; creditors’ rights; asset protection; nonprobate transfers; planning for incapacity and death; and wealth transfer taxation. This essay …

Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Schwarcz

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Insurance companies are in the business of discrimination. Insurers attempt to segregate insureds into separate risk pools based on the differences in their risk profiles, first, so that different premiums can be charged to the different groups based on their differing risks and, second, to incentivize risk reduction by insureds. This is why we let insurers discriminate. There are limits, however, to the types of discrimination that are permissible for insurers. But what exactly are those limits and how are they justified? To answer these questions, this Article (a) articulates the leading fairness and efficiency arguments for and against limiting …

Taxing Civil Rights Gains, Anthony C. Infanti

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In this article, I take a novel approach to the question of what constitutes a "tax." I argue that the unique burdens placed on same-sex couples by the federal and state "defense of marriage" acts (the DOMAs) constitute a tax on gay and lesbian families.

Classifying the DOMAs as a "tax" has important substantive and rhetorical consequences. As a tax, the DOMAs are subject to the same constitutional restrictions as other taxes. This opens them to challenge under the federal constitution's direct tax clauses and the uniformity clauses present in many state constitutions. Where such constitutional challenges are unavailable or …

Bringing Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Into The Tax Classroom, Anthony C. Infanti

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A recent piece in the Journal of Legal Education analyzing student surveys by the Law School Admission Council reports that, despite improvement in the past decade, LGBT students still experience a law school climate in which they encounter substantial discrimination both inside and outside the classroom. Included among the list of "best practices" to improve the law school climate for LGBT students was a recommendation to incorporate discussions of LGBT issues in non-LGBT courses, such as tax. In a timely coincidence, the Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues held a day-long program at the 2009 AALS annual meeting …

Tax Equity, Anthony C. Infanti

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Simply put, this article stands the traditional concept of tax equity on its head. Challenging the notion that tax equity is an unequivocal good, this article deconstructs the concept of tax equity to reveal the subtle, yet pernicious ways in which it shapes tax policy debates and impinges upon contributions to those debates. The article describes how tax equity, with its narrow focus on income - as the sole relevant metric for judging tax fairness, presupposes a population that is homogeneous along all other lines. Through this insidious homogenization, tax equity performs both a sanitizing and a screening function in …

Tax As Urban Legend, Anthony C. Infanti

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In this essay, I review UC-Berkeley history professor Robin Einhorn's book, American Taxation, American Slavery. In this provocatively-titled book, Einhorn traces the relationship between democracy, taxation, and slavery from colonial times through the antebellum period. By re-telling some of the most familiar set piece stories of American history through the lens of slavery, Einhorn reveals how the stories that we tell ourselves over and over again about taxation and politics in America are little more than the stuff of urban legend.

In the review, I provide a brief summary of Einhorn's discussion of the relationship between slavery and colonial taxation, …

Homo Sacer, Homosexual: Some Thoughts On Waging Tax Guerrilla Warfare, Anthony C. Infanti

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Inspired by Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, this essay raises the question whether lesbians and gay men should fundamentally rethink their relationship with the law. Until now, lesbians and gay men have played by the rules: We bide our time for the appropriate moment to challenge the application of the law, and then do so from within the legal system through impact litigation. Focusing on Agamben's discussion of Kafka's parable, "Before the Law," this essay challenges us to consider whether, instead of engaging the law on its own terms, lesbians and gay men should use the …

A Better Analogy: "Jews," "Homosexuals," And The Inclusion Of Sexual Orientation As A Forbidden Characteristic In Antidiscrimination Laws, Marc A. Fajer

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No abstract provided.

Family Law And Gay And Lesbian Family Issues In The Twentieth Century, David L. Chambers, Nancy D. Polikoff

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Over these thirty years, lesbians and gay men have increasingly challenged conventional definitions of marriage and the family. In this brief article, we tell the story of gay people and family law in the United States across this period. We divide our discussion into two sections: issues regarding the recognition of the same-sex couple relationship and issues regarding gay men and lesbians as parents. These issues overlap, of course, but since family law discussions commonly treat adult-adult issues of all sorts separately from parent-child issues, we believe it convenient and helpful to do so as well.

The Fearful Symmetry Of Gay Rights, Religious Freedom, And Racial Equality, Walter J. Walsh

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A decade has now passed since Julia Cooper Mack authored her most controversial judicial opinion, Gay Rights Coalition of Georgetown University Law Center v. Georgetown University. That opinion provoked two acts of Congress aimed at its reversal, newspaper editorials from coast to coast, and over one hundred scholarly authors debating its wisdom. In this short essay, I shall suggest that this extended hermeneutic debate has yet to touch upon the deepest implications of Judge Mack's Georgetown opinion. While recent scholarship on this story praises Judge Mack's unusual ability to reconcile clashing interest groups, a more accurate account might be …