Legal Writing Professor Claire Robinson-May

C|M|LAW Legal Writing Professor Claire Robinson-May presented “Enhancing Understanding by Inviting Student Creativity into the Legal Writing Classroom,” on April 26, 2014, at the Southeastern Legal Writing Conference held at Stetson University College of Law.  In her presentation, May noted that teachers of legal writing rarely offer students an opportunity to be creative. Rather, they regularly ask students to produce research logs, memos, motions, and other documents that are similar to those produced by their peers. But, in addition to teaching legal writing, May is also pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing. She brought that experience into her legal writing classroom and invited her law students to bring in their creativity as well. May’s presentation described an assignment in which she required students to outline and analyze a statute and then convey the information to the class through a creative presentation. Student group presentations included an original song, an interactive game, a comic strip, a public service announcement, an original children’s book, and more. May believes the assignment enhanced student understanding of the material by engaging student creativity in the learning process.

Professor Browne Lewis

On April 9, 2014, C|M|LAW’s Leon and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law Browne Lewis presented a lecture at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.  The lecture dealt with the of impact reproductive technology on legal parentage.  Professor Lewis discussed the factors courts consider when determining the legal mother of a child conceived as the result of a surrogacy arrangement.  She also explained the manner in which the court adjudicates the paternity of a man whose wife is artificially inseminated with donor sperm and with an anonymous sperm donor.  Lastly, she analyzed the public health consequences of creating designer children using reproductive technology.

In addition, Professor Lewis was recently elected to the AALS Women in Legal Education Archives Subcommittee.  This Committee is charged with reviewing the contents of the current archives; creating a mechanism to share the archival information with our members; adding oral histories and other additional data to the archives; and maintaining the Schlesinger Archives.

Professor John Plecnik

C|M|LAW Professor John Plecnik’s article, The New Flat Tax: A Modest Proposal For a Constitutionally Apportioned Wealth Tax, was published in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly at 41 Hastings Const. L.Q. 483 (2014).  As usual, Professor Plecnik begins with a flourish:

“Eat the poor children,” proposes Jonathan Swift.
“Nay,” protests Occupy Wall Street, “Eat the rich!”

His Article does not really propose eating the rich with draconically high taxes. However, he says, the United States has experienced years of multi-billion dollar deficits. Many liberals have proposed a European-style value added tax or VAT to balance the budget. Many conservatives have proposed a “fair” or flat tax. Like the Devil, regressive consumption taxes go by many names. Whether they know it or not, liberals and conservatives are proposing essentially the same thing — a federal sales tax, which disproportionately impacts the poor and middle class. Plecnik’s article counters with a truly modest proposal for the New Flat Tax on wealth rather than consumption.

Congressional power to “lay and collect Taxes” is subject to two rules. Indirect taxes must be uniform, whereas direct taxes must be apportioned so that states pay in proportion to their population. Under the Obamacare decision, there is little doubt that wealth taxes are direct taxes. However, levying a wealth tax based on population has the unfair result of different tax rates in different states.

For some time, scholars have debated ways to skirt the Apportionment Clause. For the first time, this Article demonstrates how a wealth tax may comply with Apportionment and still be fair. Under this Article’s proposal, the federal government would collect a wealth tax at a uniform rate and retain each state’s constitutionally apportioned share of the tax. The excess unapportioned share would be refunded to the state of origin via a state-level “pick up” tax. This revenue sharing arrangement — inspired by the pre-EGTRRA credit for state death taxes — ensures a uniform state and federal tax burden without redistributing wealth among the states. Thus, horizontal equity is achieved and both the letter and spirit of the law are satisfied.

You can read the full article on SSRN at:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423803