Critical Tax Conference

Patrick E. Hobbs

Dean and Professor of Law
Seton Hall Law School

Patrick E. Hobbs is Dean of Seton Hall University School of Law. In his 12 years as Dean, he has shepherded the Law School through a series of groundbreaking initiatives that have raised Seton Hall Law to unprecedented prominence. Its health law program is consistently ranked among the top 10 nationally. The Law School boasts a faculty that is world-renowned in such diverse areas as intellectual property, social justice, corporate bankruptcy, national security policy, and employment law. Though its heart remains in New Jersey, Seton Hall Law students hail from every state in the U.S. and are among of the best and brightest legal minds in the country. Building on the school’s many strengths, Dean Hobbs has established several centers of excellence: the Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law & Policy; the Center for Policy and Research; and the Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology.  Under his leadership, Seton Hall Law has achieved worldwide prominence through a series of groundbreaking initiatives emanating from the school’s social justice mission. The school has influenced policy and public attitudes globally through its series of reports on the abuses at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp. Dean Hobbs has advocated for the growth of the Seton Hall Law Center for Social Justice, offering clinical programs with students and professors taking on cases addressing predatory lending, domestic violence, international human rights, and education and housing policy reform.Dean Hobbs has also sustained the Law School’s strong ties to Newark through its support of an array of “pipeline” educational programs designed to introduce Newark youth, from middle school through college, to careers in the law.  The New Jersey Legal Education Empowerment Project – NJ LEEP – was founded in 2006 for economically disadvantaged students from 8th to 12th grade, to introduce them to the legal profession and to shore up their academic skills. This year the program will graduate its second cohort of high school seniors, all of whom were admitted to prestigious colleges and universities. Last week Dean Hobbs was honored by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund with its Excellence Award for his work on behalf of diversity within the legal profession and for “exemplifying Justice Thurgood Marshall’s commitment to justice, civil rights and education.” Dean Hobbs speaks for all of us when he said, “Seton Hall Law School and its faculty are committed to increasing the diversity of the legal profession because we know we will only reach Justice Marshall’s goals when our profession reflects the broad diversity of our American society.”  Dean Hobbs joined the law school faculty in 1990 and was named Dean in 1999. Previously he was a tax attorney with the law firm of Shanley & Fisher in Roseland, New Jersey. He received his B.A. in accounting from Seton Hall University, his J.D. from the University of North Carolina and his LL.M. (in taxation) from New York University.

Anthony C. Infanti

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Anthony C. Infanti is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, teaching courses in the tax area. Professor Infanti’s research focuses particularly upon the intersection of tax law with sexual orientation and gender identity. His scholarly articles have appeared in, among others, the Utah Law Review, Buffalo Law Review, Santa Clara Law Review, Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal, Unbound: The Harvard Journal of the Legal Left, the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law. Professor Infanti is also the author of Everyday Law for Gays and Lesbians (And Those Who Care About Them) (Paradigm Publishers 2007) and co-editor of Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press 2009). Professor Infanti has received both the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award as well as an Excellence in Teaching Award from the graduating students of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and of the American Bar Foundation.

Bridget J. Crawford

Professor of Law, Pace University Law School

Bridget J. Crawford teaches Federal Income Taxation; Estate and Gift Taxation; Wills, Trusts and Estates; and Feminist Legal Theory. She joined the Pace faculty in 2003, after more than six years of law practice at Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy LLP in New York. Her practice was concerned with income, estate and gift tax planning for individuals, as well as tax and other advice to closely-held corporations and exempt organizations. Professor Crawford is a former Lecturer in Law and Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is the co-author of the casebook Federal Taxes on Gratuitous Transfers (Aspen) and the author of several articles on the tax treatment of wealth, marriage and the family. Her present scholarship focuses on issues of gender and tax policy.

Dorothy A. Brown

Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law

Dorothy Brown received her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and her LLM in Taxation from New York University in 1984. She practiced tax and securities law in Washington, DC and then went to work on Wall Street as an investment banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert. In 1991 she began her career in law teaching as an Assistant professor of law at George Mason. She has subsequently taught at Cincinnati and Washington and Lee law schools. She joined the faculty at Emory Law School in 2008 where she teaches Corporate Tax, Critical Race Theory, Federal Income Tax, and Tax Policy.Her articles have been published in some of the leading law journals in the country and she has published in numerous symposia. She is the author of CRITICAL RACE THEORY: CASES, MATERIALS AND PROBLEMS (Thomson/West) which is currently in its second edition. She has also published op-eds with the N.Y. TIMES and has appeared recently on Need to Know on PBS, and CNN’s Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien.

David Cay Johnston

Tax Columnist, Reuters 

Reuters tax columnist David Cay Johnston received a 2001 Pulitzer for his innovative coverage of taxes in The New York Times. He is the author of two bestsellers on taxes, PERFECTLY LEGAL and FREE LUNCH. His fourth book, THE FINE PRINT, will be out in September. He also teaches the property and tax and regulatory law of the ancient world at Syracuse University College of Law.

Alice G. Abreu

James E. Beasley Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law

Professor Alice G. Abreu specializes in federal income tax law, with a special emphasis in the formulation of tax policy. Before joining Temple Law School, she clerked for Judge Edward N. Cahn in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and practiced tax law with Dechert LLP in Philadelphia.Professor Abreu is nationally known for her ability to make students understand and care about the tax system, and in 2007 she won the University Lindback award for distinguished teaching. She has been a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including the Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and has taught Corporate Tax at the Yale Law School. She has been quoted in the tax column of the Wall Street Journal, is an officer of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, and a frequent speaker at national and regional tax conferences.

Rifat Azam

Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya

Dr. Rifat Azam received his LLD in Law from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, serves as Lecturer, Radzyner School of Law at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. His specializations are:Tax Law, International Taxation, E-commerce. Azam's main research and publications concern:E-commerce taxation, Family Taxation. His main fields of teaching: Tax Law, International Taxation, Tax Policy, Cyberspace Law.

Joshua D. Blank

NYU School of Law, Associate Professor of the Practice of Tax Law

Professor Blank joined the faculty of NYU School of Law in 2010. Professor Blank's scholarship focuses on tax administration and compliance, taxpayer privacy, and taxation of business entities. His recent publications include What's Wrong with Shaming Corporate Tax Abuse, 62 Tax L. Rev. 539 (2009), Overcoming Overdisclosure: Toward Tax Shelter Detection, 56 UCLA L. Rev. 1629 (2009), and When Is Tax Enforcement Publicized?, 30 Va. Tax Rev. 1 (2010) (with Daniel Z. Levin). His current article, In Defense of Individual Tax Privacy, will be published in Emory Law Journal in December 2011.Professor Blank is active in professional and scholarly tax law organizations. He is Vice Chair of the Teaching Taxation Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association. In January 2009, Blank was elected a full member of Academia Tributária das Américas (ATA) – Tax Academy of the Americas, an association of tax scholars from the three Americas as well as from Portugal and Spain. Prior to entering academia, Blank was a tax lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he advised clients regarding tax aspects of public and private company mergers, spin-offs and hostile takeovers. Blank received his B.A., summa cum laude, from NYU, College of Arts and Science, his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School and his LL.M. (Taxation) from NYU School of Law.

Leslie Book

Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law

Professor Book joined the Villanova Law School the Fall of 2000, where he is a Professor of Law and Director of the Graduate Tax Program. Professor Book received his B.A. from Franklin & Marshall College (magna cum laude), his J.D. from Stanford University School of Law, and his LL.M (Taxation) from New York University School of Law. At Stanford Law School, he was a founding editor of the Stanford Law & Policy Review, and at New York University School of Law he was a student-editor at the Tax Law Review. Prior to coming to Villanova, he was an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell and at Baker & McKenzie in New York and London, and he was an Assistant Clinical Professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law in Hamden, CT. He is a national authority on tax procedure and issues affecting the low income taxpayer community. Book has written extensively on the relationship of IRS agency actions and broader principles of administrative law, on the intersection of tax and poverty law, and on tax compliance. Recent articles have appeared in the Stanford Law & Policy Review, Indiana University, University of Wisconsin, and American University Law Reviews, and in annual reports submitted to Congress by the National Taxpayer Advocate.

Emily A. Cauble

Assistant Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law

Emily Cauble joined MSU College of Law after teaching Corporate Tax, Partnership Tax, and a short course regarding agreement drafting as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. After graduating summa cum laude from University of Michigan Law School in 2006, Professor Cauble practiced in the tax transactions group at Mayer Brown in Chicago for three years. With academic interests in tax policy, business taxation, and tax planning, she has published articles in scholarly journals regarding investment activities by tax-exempt entities and partnership taxation. Prior to attending law school, Professor Cauble worked as a research assistant at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.

Danshera Cords

Professor of Law, Albany Law School

Prof. Cords focuses on tax law and was most recently a professor of law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. Before joining Capital's law faculty in 2002, Prof. Cords was an attorney-advisor to the Hon. Maurice B. Foley of the U.S. Tax Court in Washington, D.C. She earned her law degree at Seattle University School of Law, and her LL.M. in taxation from New York University School of Law.

John Coverdale

Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law

Professor John Coverdale specializes in federal and state tax law and in the interplay of law and catholic social though. Professor Coverdale received his B.A., magna cum laude, from the Lateran University. He received his M.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Navarre and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. From 1971 to 1983, he taught History at Princeton and Northwestern Universities. In 1984, he received his J.D. from the University of Chicago, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and was an Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Antonin Scalia, now Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was an attorney with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson, Washington, D.C., before coming to Seton Hall in 1993. He has published in the area of 19th and 20th Century Spanish history as well as in taxation, administrative law, catholic social thought, and just war theory.

Bobby L. Dexter

Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law

Professor Bobby Dexter joined the full-time faculty at Chapman in the Fall of 2006 after serving as a Westerfield Fellow at Loyola University (New Orleans) College of Law.  A specialist in tax and business law, he previously served as a tax partner in the Chicago office of Foley & Lardner, LLP and later at a “Big Four” accounting firm.  Professor Dexter’s scholarship focuses on tax law and policy and has appeared in numerous journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Tulane Law Review, the University of Kansas Law Review, the Denver University Law Review, and the Mercer Law Review.  In addition to traditional legal scholarship, Professor Dexter has also produced substantial, practice-oriented literature.  He co-authored (as principal draftsman) Annuities, Life Insurance, and Long-Term Care Insurance Products, one of the many works in the well-regarded Tax Management Portfolio series published by the Bureau of National Affairs.  He also co-edited the insurance company chapter of the Mertens Federal Income Taxation treatise.Professor Dexter received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he served on the Editorial Board of the Harvard Law Review with U.S. President Barack Obama.  Professor Dexter teaches Federal Income Taxation, Corporate Taxation, Corporate Mergers & Acquisitions, Secured Transactions, and Business Associations (“Corporations”).

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Assistant Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Professor Mirit Eyal-Cohen joined the School of Law as Assistant Professor of Law and teaches courses in the law of taxation, including Federal Income Tax and a seminar on small business taxation.  Professor Eyal-Cohen’s expertise in small business taxation will contribute meaningfully to the School’s new Innovation Practice Institute.Professor Eyal-Cohen received a Bachelor of Law (L.L.B.), a Master of Law (L.L. M.) specializing in tax law, and a Master of Arts (History of the Americas) from Tel-Aviv University.  In addition, she holds a doctorate in law (S.J.D.) from UCLA School of Law focused on the development of small business taxation.   She comes to the Law School from a position as a judicial law clerk for Judge Mark V. Holmes on the Federal Tax Court in Washington, D.C.A scholar in the emerging field of tax history, Professor Eyal-Cohen has published works including, When American Small Businessmen Hit the Jackpot: Taxes, Politics and the History of Organizational Choice in the 1950s, PITTSBURGH TAX LAW REVIEW (forthcoming), and Preventive Tax Policy – Chief Justice Roger J. Traynor’s Tax Philosophy, 59 HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL 877 (2008).

Mary L. Fellows

Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School

Professor Mary Louise Fellows is a nationally recognized scholar in the areas of trusts and estates, federal tax law, and feminist jurisprudence. She teaches courses on wills and trusts, estate planning, taxation, and feminist theory. Professor Fellows is the first Everett Fraser Professor of Law and is the first woman to hold a permanent appointment to an endowed chair at the University of Minnesota. Professor Fellows graduated, magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an Editor of the University of Michigan Law Review and is a member of the Order of the Coif. Upon graduation from law school, she joined the faculty of the University of Illinois College of Law. In 1982, she became a Professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. In addition to serving as a tenured member of these faculties, Professor Fellows has been a Visiting Professor at Columbia University Law School, Harvard University Law School, Cornell University Law School, and the University of Michigan Law School. She was the Visiting Everett Fraser Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School during the 1989-90 academic year and was named the Everett Fraser Professor of Law in 1990. Professor Fellows was a recipient of the 1996 John K. & Elsie Lampert Fesler Research Grant. Professor Fellows is a member of the American Law Institute. She is an Adviser for the Restatement of the Law, Third-Property (Donative Transfers) and for the Restatement of Law, Third-Trusts. Professor Fellows also serves as the representative of law schools on the Joint Editorial Board of the Uniform Probate Code. She completed a Ph.D. in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval literature at the University of Minnesota in 2005.

David Gamage

Assistant Professor of Law, UC Berkeley Law

During the 2010-2012 academic years, Professor Gamage will be on teaching leave while serving as Special Counsel and Senior Stanley S. Surrey Fellow to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Policy. In this position, Professor Gamage will administer the individual income tax portfolio of the Treasury Department's Tax Legislative Counsel, thus overseeing the drafting of all individual income tax regulations as well as advising on new legislation and executive branch initiatives related to the individual income tax. Professor Gamage's position is expected to primarily involve managing the implementation of the income tax provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the 2010 healthcare reform law). Professor Gamage will return to teaching at Berkeley Law in the fall semester of 2012.David Gamage's primary research and teaching interests are in the areas of taxation, budget policy, and public finance. Gamage has written extensively on state-level tax and budget policy and on the economic theory of taxation. He has testified before the California State Legislature and presented to other government audiences on a number of occasions. Professor Gamage also writes on the use of tax law to achieve social welfare and regulatory goals (such as the intersection of taxation and healthcare policy), on U.S. federal-level tax and budget policy, on the organizational design of tax lawmaking institutions, and on distributional considerations in both public and private law. He frequently accepts radio and television interviews on these topics and has been quoted in numerous newspaper and magazine articles.

Wendy Gerzog

Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law

Professor Gerzog joined the faculty after serving as a teaching fellow at the National Law Center of the George Washington University and as an attorney-adviser to the Honorable Norman O. Tietjens of the United States Tax Court in Washington, D.C. Professor Gerzog is an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI), and a past chair of the AALS Donative Transfers, Fiduciaries, and Estate Planning Section. She has testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on a proposed amendment to the home office deduction section and before the Treasury Department on a proposed regulation under IRC deduction section 2053 regarding post death events and on a proposed amendment to the QTIP estate tax provisions.

Iris Goodwin

Associate Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law

Professor Goodwin joined the College of Law faculty in 2005, having been a Faculty Fellow at Seton Hall Law School from 2003-2005.  She earned her J.D. at New York University and her Ph.D. in political theory at Columbia University, where she was a Chamberlain Fellow and a member of the Columbia College of faculty.  She then began her legal career as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell.  Later she was Senior Vice President and Associate Fiduciary Counsel at Bessemer Trust Company.  Professor Goodwin teaches Property, Gratuitous Transfers (Trusts & Estates), Wealth Transfer Tax, and Ownership & Justice (a seminar exploring the philosophic foundations of private property).

Richard K. Greenstein

Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law

Professor Richard Greenstein teaches in the fields of criminal law, jurisprudence, federal court jurisdiction, conflict of laws, and ethics.  His published scholarship focuses primarily on Jurisprudence, and he has presented papers on the philosophy of law before the American Philosophical Association, of which he is a member.  Professor Greenstein is currently working on a series of articles exploring the jurisprudence of Tax Law with Professor Alice Abreu. Following law school, Professor Greenstein was both managing and staff attorney at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society in Atlanta, Georgia.  He taught at Georgia State University's College of Law from 1982 to 1985, when he joined the Temple faculty.  From 1996 to 1999, Professor Greenstein was the Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law.  In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Professor Greenstein currently directs the Law School's Freedman Fellow Program.

David Herzig

Assistant Professor of Law, Valparaiso University Law School

David Herzig is an associate professor (effective 2012) of law at Valparaiso University School of Law.  David's research and teaching interests lie in tax, administrative and regulatory law. He teaches a variety of tax courses. His research focuses on taxation and a variety of contemporary tax issues, such as the same-sex couple tax issues. David’s core teaching load includes Federal Income Taxation, Corporate and Partnership Taxation, Estate and Gift Taxation, Trusts and Estates, and Tax Policy.  He has spoken at numerous law schools and continuing legal education programs including, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, Emory University School of Law, University of Notre Dame the Law School, University of Florida Levin College of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law and the Notre Dame Tax and Estate Planning Institute and NYU Tax Institute among others, on the topics of tax and trusts and estates. Prior to entering into academia, David worked for a private family on the Forbes 400 Richest People in America list and with the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, among others.  David specialized in estate planning for high net worth individuals and families. He has assisted clients in litigated probate and trust matters, and represented clients before the Internal Revenue Service in matters involving complex income, estate, gift and generation-skipping tax issues.

Stephanie Hunter McMahon

Associate Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law

A summa cum laude graduate of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, GA (BA), a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, and a graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, Professor McMahon has a strong interest in the development of fiscal issues in American history. A former Samuel I. Golieb fellow, her current research explores the forces that led to changes in tax policy. Prior to joining the academic world, Professor McMahon spent several years in the tax field. She worked as a tax attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York and at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, also in New York. During graduate school, she worked at Nixon, Peabody LLP in Washington, D.C. Professor McMahon is currently working on a project exploring tax avoidance and its historical impact on the development of the Internal Revenue Code.

Tracy A. Kaye

Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law

Professor Tracy Kaye, the Co-Director of the IRS Chief Counsel's Externship Program and the Dean Acheson Legal Stage Program, specializes in federal income, international and comparative tax law. During the summer of 2007, Professor Kaye was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich, Germany. Her research was selected for the 3rd annual Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop at the University of Michigan Law School in May, 2008. Her resulting article The Gentle Art of Corporate Seduction: Tax Incentives in the United States and the European Union was published in the University of Kansas Law Review in the fall of 2008. Professor Kaye is currently Chair of the ABA Tax Section’s Teaching Taxation Committee. She is also the Co-Director of Seton Hall Law School’s Dean Acheson Legal Stage program, sponsored by the European Court of Justice and the American Embassy in Luxembourg, to promote understanding of European Union Law among American lawyers. During 1998, she was the Director of the Seton Hall Law School “Law in Italy” program. She was a visiting professor at the University of International Business and Economics, School of Law, Beijing, China, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, Germany and the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. She has also given guest lectures for academic, governmental and professional audiences in the United States, Europe and Asia. In spring 2002, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat, Freiburg, Germany. She is also an Associate Member of the European Association of Tax Law Professors.Prior to beginning her academic career at Seton Hall Law School in 1991, Professor Kaye studied law and taxation at the Universities of Georgetown, DePaul and Illinois. She worked as a tax legislative advisor for a U.S. Senator, who was a member of the Senate Finance Committee, and practiced and taught tax for Arthur Young & Co. (d.b.a. Ernst & Young) in Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C. She earned a B.S. in Accountancy, magna cum laude, at the University of Illinois; an M.S. in Taxation at DePaul University; and her J.D., cum laude, at Georgetown University Law Center.

Leandra Lederman

Professor of Law, Indiana University, Bloomington-Maurer School of Law

Professor Leandra Lederman is the William W. Oliver Professor of Tax Law and Director of the Tax Program at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. She teaches Federal Income Tax, Corporate Tax, Tax Procedure, and Tax Policy Colloquium. Professor Lederman was a faculty member at George Mason University School of Law from 1997 until 2005. She spent the 2002-2003 academic year at the University of Texas School of Law as a visiting professor. From 1994 to 1997, she was a member of the faculty of Mercer University's Walter F. George School of Law. In 2001, Professor Lederman was recognized by George Mason University for excellence in teaching; in 2005, she received the Law Alumni Association Legal Teaching Award from New York University School of Law; and in 2009, she received a Trustees' Teaching Award from the Maurer School of Law. In October 2011, she taught U.S. Federal Income Tax at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. Professor Lederman received an A.B. degree cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1987, with honors in her major of Romance Languages. In 1990, she earned a J.D. cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was a Note and Comment Editor of the N.Y.U. Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Professor Lederman subsequently earned her LL.M. in taxation from N.Y.U., where she was a student editor of the Tax Law Review. After practicing law as an associate at White & Case in New York City and receiving her LL.M., she clerked for Judge David Laro of the United States Tax Court in Washington, D.C. 

Sagit Leviner

Associate Professor of Law, Buffalo Law School & affiliated with Ono Academic College Faculty of Law (Israel)

Sagit Leviner is an Associate Professor of Law with the University at Buffalo Law School and an Overseas Affiliated Faculty with Ono Academic College Faculty of Law (Israel). Her research explores the coming together of normative and pragmatic aspects of tax policy design, particularly with respect to tax enforcement, behavioral attributes of taxation, and the tax burden distribution. Professor Leviner graduated from the Doctor of the Science of Laws (S.J.D., 2007) and the Master of Laws (LL.M., 2002) programs of the University of Michigan Law School (Ann Arbor, MI) where she also co-taught the 2006-07 Tax Policy Workshop with Professors Reuven Avi-Yonah and Jim Hines and led the 2005-06 Law School S.J.D. Colloquium. Professor Leviner served as Senior Researcher with the United States Internal Revenue Service National Headquarters (Office of Research/ Office of Chief Counsel, Washington, DC) from 2007 to 2008. In 2008-09 she visited with the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law Cegla Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Law. Professor Leviner won numerous honors and awards for her research and scholarship.

Lynn Lu

NYU School of Law, Associate Director for the Lawyering Program 2011-2012 & Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering

Before joining the Lawyering faculty, Lynn Lu was Staff Attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice (formerly the Welfare Law Center), where she handled class-action litigation and policy advocacy to protect the rights of those eligible for public benefits, including health care, nutrition, and child care assistance. Lynn was formerly Katz Fellow and Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where she focused on criminal justice and child welfare reform. While attending NYU School of Law, Lynn was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow and Articles Selection Editor for the NYU Review of Law and Social Change. After graduating from NYU School of Law magna cum laude, Lynn clerked for the Honorable Kermit V. Lipez, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Lynn graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in Women's Studies and holds an M.A. in English Literature/Critical Theory from Sussex University. Before embarking on a legal career Lynn was a book editor and publisher for several years.

Ajay K. Mehrotra

Professor of Law, Indiana University, Bloomington-Maurer School of Law

As a historian and legal scholar, Mehrotra has concentrated his research on the history of American tax law and policy. He recently co-edited and contributed to a collection of essays titled The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective. His scholarly articles have appeared in peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journals, as well as student-edited law reviews. Mehrotra's research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, the American Historical Association, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently at work on a book manuscript about the rise of progressive taxation and American state formation at the turn of the twentieth century. At Indiana Law, Mehrotra teaches Introduction to Federal Income Tax, Tax Policy, and American Legal History. He is a recent recipient of the law school's Leon E. Wallace Teaching Award and Indiana University's Trustees Teaching Award. Mehrotra also supervises independent readings with students interested in tax policy or the history of American law and political economy.

Omri Marian

Sullivan and Cromwell, LLP

Omri Marian practices tax law at the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. He holds an S.J.D. and an LL.M. in International Taxation, both from the University of Michigan Law School. Omri's research deals primarily with the application of comparative legal analysis to the study of tax laws. He co-authored Global Perspectives on Income Taxation Law (Oxford University Press). This coming fall, Omri will join the faculty of the University of Florida Levin College of Law.    

Joy Sabino Mullane

Associate Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law

Professor Mullane comes from the University of Florida College of Law to join Villanova’s faculty. Professor Mullane received her B.A., J.D. with honors, and LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Florida.  While at the University of Florida, she served as a senior research editor on the Florida Law Review and published a casenote, “Employer Liability for Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment Created by Supervisors Under Title VII: Towards a Clearer Standard?,” 51 Florida Law Review 559 (1999).  She also was invited to join the Order of the Coif.  After law school, she was a corporate finance associate at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in Atlanta, then clerked for the Honorable Susan Black on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and later worked as an associate specializing in employee benefits and financial products tax at Davis & Harman in Washington, D.C. In 2005, she joined the University of Florida Levin College of Law faculty as a Visiting Assistant Professor, teaching Corporate Tax, Federal Income Taxation, and Federal Tax Research. At Villanova, Professor Mullane teaches Introduction to Federal Taxation, Wealth Tax, a seminar on Retirement Policy and courses in the Graduate Tax Program.

Shu-Yi Oei

Associate Professor of Law, Tulane Law School

Professor Oei joined the faculty at Tulane Law School in 2009.   After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2003, Professor Oei practiced tax law at the Boston law firm of Bingham McCutchen for almost six years.  Her practice involved advising clients in a wide variety of federal, state, and international tax matters and encompassed individual, corporate, partnership, and cross-border taxation.  From 2008 to 2009, Professor Oei also held a post-graduate research fellowship at Harvard Law School.  Professor Oei's research and teaching interests are in US taxation and tax policy. In addition to her law degree, Professor Oei holds a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.  While in law school, Professor Oei was a primary editor of the Women's Law Journal, a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, and also founded the Harvard Hapkido Club.

Henry Ordower

Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law

Professor Henry M. Ordower joined SLU LAW in 1977 after two years of large firm practice emphasizing corporate and real estate transactions and tax law. In his more than 30 years of teaching and scholarship, Prof. Ordower has established himself as an expert in analyzing complex statutes and structuring business transactions for economic and tax efficiency. He has published articles in domestic and international publications on developments and complexities in U.S. taxation, estate planning, compensation deferral, trusts, and hedge funds. He lectures frequently both at home and abroad, including Germany, Scandinavia, France, China, South Africa, China and South Korea. He has traveled to approximately 120 countries, is fluent in German and Swedish, and reads eight other languages. Professor Ordower’s recent scholarship explores mutual assistance in tax matters under tax treaties and the role of hedge funds, private equity funds and sovereign wealth funds in the financial markets. Currently, he is exploring cultural factors that contribute to tax avoidance and evasion.

Leigh Osofsky

Associate Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law

Professor Osofsky holds an A.B. magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University (2003) and a J.D. and membership to the Order of the Coif from Stanford Law School (2006). Professor Osofsky's scholarship focuses on tax compliance and uncertainty in tax administration. Professor Osofsky's publications include Getting Realistic About Responsive Tax Administration 66 Tax L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2012), The Case Against Strategic Tax Law Uncertainty, 64 Tax L. Rev. 489 (2011), and Solving Section 734(b), 60 Tax Law. 473 (2007). Professor Osofsky teaches courses addressing various aspects of taxation and policy. Before joining the University of Miami faculty, Professor Osofsky was an Acting Assistant Professor of Tax Law at New York University from 2009-2011. Prior to entering academia, Professor Osofsky clerked for the Honorable Pierre Leval on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and worked as a tax attorney at Fenwick & West, LLP, specializing in tax transactional planning and also serving as counsel in complex tax litigation matters.

Diane Ring

Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Boston College Law School

Diane M. Ring is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, where she researches and writes primarily in the field of international taxation, corporate taxation, and the taxation of financial instruments. Her recent work addresses issues including cross border tax arbitrage, advance pricing agreements, and international tax relations. Ms. Ring is currently the U.S. National Reporter for the 2012 IFA Conference on the Debt Equity Conundrum, and was the U.S. National Reporter for the 2004 IFA Conference on Double Nontaxation. She was the Assistant General Reporter for the 1995 IFA Conference on Financial Instruments and was a consultant to the IFA research project on the impact of technological and financial innovation on the taxation of income and activities. Ms. Ring is also co-author of three case books in taxation– one on corporate taxation, one on international taxation, and one on ethical problems in federal tax practice. Prior to joining Boston College Law School, Ms. Ring was an associate professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, and an assistant professor at Harvard Law School. Before entering academia, Ms. Ring practiced at the firm of Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C., specializing in the area of international tax and the taxation of financial instruments. Ms. Ring also clerked for Judge Jon O. Newman of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Kerry Ryan

Associate Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law

Professor Kerry Ryan entered academia as a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Florida, where she taught Income Taxation, Corporate Taxation and Federal Tax Research. She joined the SLU LAW faculty as an assistant professor of law and teaches Income Taxation, Estate & Gift Taxation, Trusts & Estates, Estate Planning, Income Taxation of Trusts & Estates and Tax Policy. Prof. Ryan received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, a master’s degree in accounting and a J.D. from Tulane University, and an LL.M. in taxation from the University of Florida. Following her LL.M., Professor Ryan practiced in the Estate and Business Succession Planning Department at Bose McKinney & Evans, LLP in Indianapolis, IN. Prof. Ryan’s recent scholarship explores the interaction between the income tax and financial aid systems and the ethical underpinnings of the gift tax exclusion for education and healthcare.

Dr. Abiola Sanni

University of Lagos, Nigeria

Emily Satterthwaite

Research Associate, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

Emily Ann Satterthwaite, BA (Yale) 1997, JD (Stanford) 2003, LLM (Toronto) 2011, MA Economics (Toronto, expected) 2013 is a Full-Time Research Associate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.  She practiced law as a tax associate in the New York and Chicago offices of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP for three years before joining the clinical faculty at the University of Chicago Law School, where she was the assistant director of the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship.  As one of two attorneys supervising the clinic, she and her students represented emerging microenterprises located in under-resourced communities in Chicago.  Emily also served as an instructor in a seminar for upper-year law students (Entrepreneurship and the Law), a skills practicum (Transactional Lawyering) and a simulation course (Negotiation and Mediation).  She is interested in all aspects of tax policy, particularly as it intersects with small businesses and lower-income taxpayers.  Emily plans be on the entry-level tax professor job market at next Fall's AALS meeting and is thrilled about the opportunity to participate in her first tax conference with all of you. 

Nancy Shurtz

Professor of Law, University of Oregon School of Law

Nancy Shurtz joined the law school faculty from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Her interests include individual and business tax law, tax policy, environmental policy, and women and the law. She is editor for the Media/book Products Committee of the American Bar Association's Real Property, Probate, and Trust Section. Shurtz has been a literature reviewer and columnist for Estate Planning magazine since 1990. Recently, she consulted with Mills College (California) about the formation of an all women's law school after her article on the subject came out in 2005 in The Hastings Women's Law Review.

Michael Simkovic

Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law

Professor Simkovic's research focuses on the regulation of credit markets through the United States Bankruptcy Code, and the regulation of financial markets in general through mandatory disclosure requirements. His research was cited in the U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee report recommending sweeping reforms of the credit card industry, which were enacted in 2009. His research has also been cited by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and in popular publications such as the New York Times and USA Today. Professor Simkovic is an expert on the credit card industry, causes of the financial crisis of 2008, credit default swaps, securitization, leveraged buyouts, fraudulent transfer law (and other avoidance actions), and open market stock repurchases. Before joining the Seton Hall faculty, Professor Simkovic was an attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York concentrating in bankruptcy litigation; a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company, specializing in legal, regulatory and business issues affecting financial services companies; and an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at Harvard Law School. At the New York Attorney General's Office, Professor Simkovic investigated retail financial service companies engaged in illegal and deceptive sales practices.

Phyllis Smith

Associate Professor of Law, Florida A & M University College of Law

Professor Phyllis Smith, Associate Professor, holds a LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and a J.D. from Florida State University and a B.S. from Florida A&M University. She practiced law for approximately eight years as a commissioned officer and attorney in the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) where she provided estate planning needs to soldiers serving throughout the country and overseas. She is currently a Faculty Senator, a member of the Executive Council of the Florida Bar Tax Section, and a member of the Continuing Legal Education Committee of the Florida Bar.  She also serves as a faculty advisor to the Women's Law Caucus and Estate Planning Sodality student organizations and as the faculty supervisor for the Volunteer Individual Taxation Assistance (VITA) program. Professor Smith focuses her scholarship on leading issues in tax policy. She published an article discussing how the tax policy limits access to higher education for low income individuals and families. She has also completed an article discussing the tax implications of self-settled domestic asset protection trusts to be published in the spring issue of the New England Law Review.

Jay Soled

Professor, Rutgers University Business School

Professor Soled has contributed articles to several journals, including the Journal of Taxation, Notre Dame Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Arizona Law Review, American Journal of Tax Policy, Virginia Tax Law Review, Real Property, Probate and Trust Journal, Brigham Young University Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Georgetown University's Tax Lawyer. Soled’s interests include enhancing tax compliance and simplifying the Internal Revenue Code. Some of his publications can be found at the Social Science Electronic Publishing website.

Nancy Staudt

Edward G. Lewis Chair in Law and Public Policy, USC Gould School of Law

Nancy Staudt, a nationally renowned tax and tax policy scholar, joined the USC Gould School of Law faculty in summer 2011. She is the inaugural holder of the Edward G. Lewis Chair in Law. Staudt has authored and edited books as well as over thirty articles, and is a frequent speaker on taxation topics to both legal and scholarly audiences. Staudt has published extensively on the tax and tax policymaking decisions that take place in both the legislative and judicial branches of government, including the recent The Judicial Power of the Purse: How Courts Fund National Defense in Times of Crisis (Chicago University Press 2011). She is in the process of completing a book with two colleagues on the “Judicial Business Cycle,” which examines how and why economic conditions affect judges’ votes and case outcomes, and is finishing a project on the application of judicial anti-abuse doctrines in the corporate tax shelter context. In addition to her extensive list of publications, Staudt is the recipient of numerous awards, including a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build a Supreme Court database for use by law and social scientists, with USC Law Prof. Lee Epstein and three others. Staudt holds a B.A. from Ohio State University, a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School and a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Chicago. Staudt previously was the Class of 1940 Research Professor of Law at Northwestern University. Before joining Northwestern, Staudt served as professor of law at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Mo., and the University of Buffalo School of Law. She has held visiting professorships at top law schools such as Vanderbilt University and Boston University as well as been a visiting scholar at Stanford University. Prior to her academic appointments, she was a tax associate at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, Calif., and she clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and provided free legal services to battered women and organizations filing for tax-exempt status.

Mildred Wigfall Robinson

Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law

 After a year as a visiting professor, Mildred Robinson accepted a permanent position at Virginia in 1985. She teaches federal income tax, state and local tax, and trusts and estates. Robinson received her J.D. from Howard University's School of Law in 1968 and her LL.M. from Harvard University's School of Law in 1971. She came to Virginia after 12 years on the faculty at Florida State, where she received the President's Award for excellence in teaching. At Florida State, she also served as associate dean for academic affairs. Robinson has served on the Law School Admission Council Board of Trustees. She was a member of the inaugural Board of Directors for Law Access, Inc. (currently The Access Group). She was a Commissioner from Virginia to the National Conference on Uniform State Laws from 1990-94 and was a member of the Board of Visitors for the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University from 1993-96. She served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools from 2000-2003 and continues to serve as a member of that organization’s Resource Corps. She is a member of the American Law Institute.