You know what I do admire about the student system: all the cite-checking. I have worked with student journals: we have caught plagiarism, we have caught AI, we have caught copyright infringement. Some fields are little too trusty. That said, more peer review would be good.

The fact that the assault on birthright citizenship has gotten this far, despite the plain text of the constitution, is astonishing. It also reveals some flawed assumptions about intellectual diversity, which sometimes involves resuscitating a dead and discredited idea b/c powerful people want to.

2010s: a startup worth $1 billion is a vanishingly rare thing (a "unicorn") 2026: a company that makes AI collars for cows is worth $ 2 billion www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The Trump Administration's violence and corruption is impossible to ignore. I created the nation’s first Accountability Commission to gather the evidence of wrongdoing in Illinois by ICE so we can hold them criminally and civilly liable.

I'd say that 150 hrs is very little for a full law review article that includes any kind of actual research, and that there is no way 15 hrs is enough to fact check a full length article written by an LLM.

WaPo Deputy Opinion Editor is just straight up lying about Mamdani's estate tax proposal (in both tweets and an op-ed). The bill contains a $1.75 million primary residence exemption, exempts retirement accounts, and the 50% marginal rate doesn’t kick in until $30 million.

Almost like it was a mistake to alienate all of our allies with idiotic trade wars, and then launch an actual hot war where we needed their help gcaptain.com/trump-calls-...

yeah the problem with leaving is that you actually have to leave “You’re a member of the L.A. County Club? Not anymore, you’re not,...That’s where a lot of these conversations break down. People realize they don’t want to give up these things they love.” www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...

In honor of international Women's Day I am going to tell you a story about Ellen Ash Peters, the first female professor at Yale Law and the first female Justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court.

DHS gets the worst of the worst. [Touches ear] Sorry, correction... DHS is the worst of the worst. bsky.app/profile/amym...

Yes

What an incredible embarrassment for all the lily-livered law firms that surrendered without a fight. Their dishonor is indelible. abovethelaw.com/2026/03/doj-...

Also, the government has lots of computers, but they are the wrong kind of compute for inference. They need to use AWS or another cloud provider just like you do. www.aboutamazon.com/news/company...

A useful piece of context is that the government does not have access to better AI models than you (actually they are worse, because they usually don't get the latest models), though they may have different guardrails. You should view government AI capabilities through that lens.

the party that wants to require ID to vote abruptly invalidating a thousand people’s IDs overnight seems like a pretty giant flashing red light

Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Everyone in America should see this and think about what it implies. And have the courage, like him, to stand up.

Just as ICE and CBP have no legitimate role in "election security" neither does the head of DHS. The mere existence of this press conference should be a scandal, much less this tone-deaf comment.

Happy to share that The Non-Punishment Principle and Restorative Justice is now out in the Penn L Rev! Thanks to the editors for their excellent work and to everyone who generously shared their feedback on this project! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

That serious people are still LOLing at threats to the integrity of the midterms is disheartening. People really need to read more about how democracies deteriorate. I hope (and still believe that) most risks won't materialize, but discounting the risks at this point is anti intellectual.

Some more #CABillionaireTax in the news: A deeper dive into whether the CBTA has learned the lessons of the most successful European wealth tax systems in Spain and Switzerland (spoiler: yep). Plus commentary from some people who haven't read the bill text 🫤. www.latimes.com/california/s...

This guy is standing up to a lot of powerful people on a lot of fronts. 🫡 (that's the salute emoji)

Just kinda seems like refusing to tell us which ICE agents murdered Alex Pretti undercuts the idea that they’re wearing masks to protect themselves — rather than to be able to kill people with impunity.

Bill Bramhall, NY Daily News

Absolutely reprehensible that AG Bondi is offering ICE stand down in exchange for access to voting rolls. Outrageous and disgusting. It shows ICE is in Minneapolis is not for law enforcement purposes. Instead it’s a way to stir up shit in blue states and extort them.

A Conversation with David Gamage, Co-Author of the California Wealth Tax Proposal open.substack.com/pub/davidgam...

For far more than you really wanted to know about how zillionaires dodge tax on inter-generational transfers, see papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

As you can see, this rationale does not really apply to publicly-traded companies. There, a founder might have additional voting rights, but the vast bulk of the economic value of the company is not held by the family. Thus, the voting-rights default rule is limited to private cos.

So this is why there has to be a voting-stock (default) rule in the CBTA. Many wealthy founders do not technically own their companies. What they own is a residual stump of voting rights. But in economic reality, of course, their family will get everything.

So voila! You have passed the entire value of your company on to your heirs without any estate tax. And your heirs also get the voting stock, so they also control the company. In theory there's gift tax on the transfer of the non-voting shares, but that is also easy to scheme around.

Now, to escape estate tax, you gift the non-voting shares to a trust for the benefit of your heirs. With careful lawyering, the trust will not be subject to estate tax. At your death, your lawyers argue your voting shares are worthless because they don't entitle the owner to any profits.

Here's how the estate-tax dodge works. You found a company you expect to rocket up in value, and you don't want your heirs to pay estate tax. So you split the stock into two classes, voting and non-voting. The n/v shares get all the dividend rights (i.e., the future profits of the company).

Even the Current Affairs article, though, is puzzled about why the default valuation (which owners can readily replace with an appraisal) includes an adjustment for voting stock. It addresses an obscure but important estate-tax planning device w/ which most non-zillionaires are likely unfamiliar.

A useful and amusing debunker from Current Affairs on the #CABillionaireTax: www.currentaffairs.org/news/every-a...

Per CA wealth tax vote-or-value test: Vote-or-value thresholds are common in tax code, e.g., in arguably biggest anti-deferral provision, subpart F. CA t/ps also can fact-and-circumstance this aspect of the wealth tax (below from @bdgesq.bsky.social @davidgamage.bsky.social et al, SSRN 5996554).

A reminder - before Trump, MAGA, Musk and Fox rewrote history - that this is what the entire country agreed had happened five years ago today:

More seriously, as most readers here know I helped draft the CA billionaire tax initiative text and you just can't get out of it by setting up a couple of LLCs in Florida. We have thought about how to block these fake paper moves for 4 years.

"ICE and CBP must be abolished" is the only reasonable position. We can debate the specifics of new agencies for immigration functions, but these agencies are simply too infected with a culture of impunity, racism, and fascism to continue. They're gangs with badges.

On Nov 19 (Wednesday), Kathleen Thomas (UNC), will present the draft paper, “Taxing Attention” at the Mizzou Law Tax Policy Colloquium, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm Central Time. 1/ @professormctax.bsky.social

On Nov 12 (Wednesday), David Elkins (Netanya) + Mirit Eyal (Alabama) will present the draft paper, "Toward AI Tax Personhood”, at the Mizzou Law Tax Policy Colloquium, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm Central Time. 1/

On Nov 5 (Wednesday), Steven Sheffrin (Tulane) will present the draft paper, “Taxpayer Realization and Economic Welfare”, at the Mizzou Law Tax Policy Colloquium, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm Central Time. 1/

I have a very bad feeling about this...

On Oct 29 (Wednesday), Susie Morse (Texas) + Shuyi Oei (Duke) + Diane Ring (Boston College) will present the draft paper, "The Origination Clause and the President's Tariffs", at the Mizzou Law Tax Policy Colloquium, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm Central Time. 1/

Pretty good writeup of the California Billionaire Tax ballot proposal (scripted in part by the usual suspects, i.e. me, @davidgamage.bsky.social and Darien Shanske) that dropped yesterday. sfstandard.com/2025/10/23/c...

On Oct 22 (Wednesday), Assaf Harpaz (Georgia), will present the draft paper, “Artificial Intelligence and Taxation’s Goals”, at the Mizzou Law Tax Policy Colloquium, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm Central Time. 1/

Not the point, but earlier in the video Vance lies about WIC being shut down (it isn’t). I know we just sort of shrug, but it’s honestly breathtaking how frequently the vice president of these United States lies.

On Oct 15 (Wednesday), Miranda Perry Fleischer (San Diego), will present the draft paper, “Equality of Opportunity and a Universal Child Allowance”, at the Mizzou Law Tax Policy Colloquium, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm Central Time. 1/