Law Commons^™

The Once And Future Property Tax: A Dialogue With My Younger Self, Edward A. Zelinsky

Faculty Articles

As I look back on my youth (expansively defined as the first 40 years of my life), everywhere I went, the local real property tax was perceived as both bad and doomed. If I could speak with the brash young law student/graduate student/alderman I once was, he would undoubtedly tell me, with great confidence, that by the beginning of the next century (which then seemed very far away) the property tax would no longer play a role in the system of local public finance.

Alas, he was wrong.

This essay explains why the young man I once was, confident of …

Erwin Griswold's Tax Law – And Ours, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

It is a pleasure for me to be here today to deliver the Erwin N. Griswold Lecture. And it is an honor to follow those who have graced this lectern before me. They include important mentors to me. Several are close friends. Today, we are in a quiet interlude awaiting the next serious political debate about restructuring the nation's tax system. No fundamental tax policy concerns are at stake in the current disputes over economic stimulus or in the political huffing and puffing about postponing or accelerating the income tax rate cuts of the 2001 Act. Those arguments are concerned …