Seminar - 3 hours. This seminar presents tax policy as an exploration in public finance, politics, special interests, and sociology as well as a reflection of society’s biases, priorities, perceptions of distribution and redistribution, and justice in the most fundamental sense of fairness and opportunity. It embraces the view that tax law is constructed and contingent. And it exposes students to a generation of “critical tax” scholarship, which has been influenced by critical legal studies and its progeny, including critical race theory, feminist legal theory, and queer theory.
The course contains a writing requirement that students can satisfy in one of two ways: (i) four “reaction” papers (of at least 5 pages) on issues covered in class; or (ii) a long research paper (at least 20 pages excluding footnotes) on a topic that may or may not have been covered in class and that, at a student’s choosing, can qualify for the law school's upper-level writing requirement as well as the Tax and Business Certificates.
Final Assessment: Other: Participation, Presentation, Paper (s)
Grading Mode: Letter Grading
Graduation Requirements: May meet Advanced Writing Requirement with the instructor's permission; Satisfies the Bias, Antiracism and Cultural-Competency requirement.