Curriculum

Taxation, someone once suggested, is the only genuinely funny subject in law school: it is an appreciation of human greed four morning hours each week. The suggestion is questionable in that some tax courses meet only three hours each week and some four-hour tax courses are given later in the day.

On a more serious note, few if any areas of the law are as pervasive in their potential application to day-to-day business law practice as the field of federal taxation. The business planner acts at his or her peril if at least the fundamental principles of our tax law are not part of the legal training brought to bear in evaluation a client’s proposed course of action.

Taxation I -- basic federal income taxation -- introduces the fundamentals of the taxation of individuals and the process through which statutory and regulatory tax provisions are formulated, enacted, subverted, revised and subverted again. The grand questions inevitably presented in any income tax system -- what is income, how much, to whom, and when -- are explored in a variety of settings, as are other issues, peculiar to our system and by no means inevitable, such as whether and in what amount a tax rate advantage should be accorded long-term capital gains.

The J.D. program’s other four-hour core course, Taxation II, tackles corporate taxation. More precisely, the course focuses on the federal tax treatment of transactions between a corporation and its shareholders and transactions involving two corporations and their respective shareholders. In corporate taxation history, theory, and practice prove inseparable, and outcomes more often than not are elective through the transaction’s design. Thus, careful analysis of a corporate tax provision commonly is expressed in the construction of ways to avoid the provision when its impact is adverse.

The J.D. curriculum includes a number of offerings that deal with the taxation of family wealth transfers, including a course in Estate and Gift Taxation, a seminar in Estate Planning, and Decedents’ Estates, a course integrating wills and trusts law with relevant tax doctrine.

In a similar way, the courses in Structuring Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Transactions and Business Planning Seminar integrate tax, corporate, and securities law and a variety of financial accounting considerations as well. Students should note that Corporations, Taxation I, and Taxation II are prerequisites for these courses. Securities Regulation is recommended but not required. In addition, Bankruptcy and Creditors' Rights is recommended for Structuring Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Transactions. Students who want to enroll in these courses in the third or fourth year should take the prerequisites and the recommended course in their second or third year.

Also listed among the advanced J.D. tax offerings are a Retirement Income: Taxation and Regulation course, Taxation of Electronic Commerce Seminar, and seminars in Tax Policy and Tax Shelters. As in other fields, seminars in the tax area advance students’ education in the field while providing students the opportunity to write scholarly papers for possible publication under the supervision of a faculty mentor.

The Graduate Program offers a rich selection of advanced and specialized courses and seminars in the field of taxation. In general, these courses and seminars are open to interested J.D. students who have satisfactorily completed the prerequisite courses.

Full-time Faculty:
Stephen B. Cohen
Martin D. Ginsburg
Charles H. Gustafson
Ronald A. Pearlman
Peter P. Weidenbruch
Ethan Yale