CM Law Faculty

Professor Deborah A. Geier has published the 2020 version of her free e-textbook, Federal Income Taxation of Individuals 2020, with the eLangdell project at CALI (the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction), which can be downloaded for free here: https://www.cali.org/books/us-federal-income-taxation-individuals.

In an effort to reduce student cost, Professor Geier published the first edition of this free e-textbook in 2014 and has updated it each year since. It is available as a pdf or Word document, as well as in ePub format (for iPads) and MOBI format (for Kindles). In addition, for the first time, the textbook will also be available in a print-on-demand format from Lulu.com, through a link on CALI’s web page. Buyers are charged only the cost of printing and shipping, with no mark-up by CALI (and no royalty for the author). The print version of Professor Geier’s textbook will cost only $34.72 plus shipping, far lower than typical law school textbooks.

Federal Income Taxation of Individuals 2020 is designed for the first law school taxation course. As with similar textbooks, it includes explanatory text, primary material, and problem sets designed to test whether students can apply the law to fact patterns. Unlike some textbooks, however, it also includes material on the development of the law and tax policy tools (economic norms, fairness norms, and basic empirical data that affects tax policy discourse). The textbook begins by providing the overarching framework of a normative income tax and various forms of consumption taxes. Armed with this deeper conceptual understanding, readers are better able to appreciate how the Internal Revenue Code is a hybrid income/consumption tax, with many tax expenditure provisions that are inconsistent with either, all of which can undermine both fairness and efficiency. For this reason, this textbook is also aimed at legislators, judges, and others who are interested in gaining a basic understanding of these issues.

Professor Milena Sterio attended the annual Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands, from Dec. 2-5.   Professor Sterio attended as a delegate of a prominent Washington D.C.-based NGO, the Public International Law and Policy Group (the Assembly of States Parties is open to state representatives and accredited NGO delegates only).

Professor Sterio participated in discussions regarding the efficiency of the International Criminal Court,  as well as regarding the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence crimes.

(At right:  ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, discussing the prosecution of crimes of sexual and gender-based violence.)

PreLaw magazine recently selected Cleveland-Marshall College of Law as having one of the 39 best J.D. tax programs in the country. C|M was the only Ohio law school selected for this prestigious designation. See https://www.bluetoad.com/publication/frame.php?i=623148&p=1&pn=&ver=html5.

C|M’s achievement is due in part to its rich tax curriculum, which is deeper than found in many J.D. programs. As tax LL.M. programs have proliferated (elective one-year, graduate degrees in law that are earned after the J.D. is completed), many law schools have reduced the number of tax course offerings at the J.D. level, thus forcing those students interested in pursuing a tax practice to incur the additional time and extra expense of earning a tax LL.M. degree. Consistent with C-M’s value proposition of preparing lawyers not only well but at a reasonable cost, Cleveland-Marshall has resisted this trend and offers a panoply of tax courses that prepares our J.D. students well for the practice of tax law. For those students who nevertheless choose to pursue a tax LL.M., Cleveland-Marshall students have a reputation at the major tax LL.M. programs of being particularly well prepared for graduate study.

Our students study not only the Federal income taxation of individuals, corporations, and partnerships but also such advanced topics as the taxation of international transactions (both inbound and outbound) and of corporate mergers and acquisitions. They learn about the tax-efficient transfer of wealth from one generation to the next, about tax crimes and tax practice and procedure before both courts and the IRS, and about the taxation of tax-exempt organizations. With such training, C|M graduates have had notable success, obtaining positions not only with private law and accounting firms but also with wealth management firms, the IRS Chief Counsel Office, the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, and major corporations (as in-house corporate tax counsel).

Clinical Professor of Law Doron Kalir was interviewed recently by the Cleveland Jewish News on current political developments in Israel. The article discussed recent efforts – and failures – by several parties to establish a coalition in Israel.

Separately, Professor Kalir completed a series of three lectures on Jewish Philosophy as a Practical Guide to Life. The lectures, given as part of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun’s Fall Weingold Forum, discussed the choices a person who accepted the Jewish God into their lives has to consider.

Associate Dean and Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich appeared in a News Channel 5 story about the progress of the Cleveland Division of Police under the federal consent decree.  He explained, for example, that the CDP used to have a huge backlog of civilian complaints that were never resolved.  Today, in contrast, that backlog is gone and civilian complaints are addressed and resolved.

Professor Witmer-Rich also emphasized they key role of rebuilding trust:

“The very beginning of the Consent Decree talked about trust between the community and the police,” said Witmer-Rich. “That’s really the fundamental issue here, is trust. When you have trust between a community and its police department, you can have mistakes made on either side and you can still have a functioning relationship and you can move forward. But when there’s a really severe breakdown in trust, and that was definitely the case, then it’s very hard to have a well-functioning police department.”