Full Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein.
What Happens Next is a podcast where the speaker gets to present his argument in just Six Minutes and that is followed by a question-and-answer period for deeper engagement.
Today’s discussion will be on Moving out of NY & Law Schools Go Woke.
Our first speaker is Chris Doyle who is a tax partner with Hodgson Russ who represents wealthy individuals who move to places like the Hamptons or Miami to avoid paying New York City income taxes. The tax authorities will be coming gun blazing to get their money. Chris Doyle will explain the issues and how to plan your life if you want to get out of high tax jurisdictions.
Our second speaker is Professor John McGinnis from Northwestern Law School. Alexander Hamilton expected lawyers to be the first line of defense to defend our constitution, but Hamilton hadn’t contemplated the next generation of lawyers educated by today’s progressive law professors. John will discuss the implications of introducing woke ideas to all areas of legal education and what that means for students and society.
Buckle up.
Chris Doyle:
Topic: Moving out of NYC (to the Hamptons or Miami!)
Bio: Tax Partner at Hodgson Russ
Opening Remarks
There are a lot of wealthy individuals concentrated in the New York City who don't like to pay taxes. The fine line that they need to walk is what if they've got some living arrangement in New York and spend a significant amount of time there but don't want to pay New York taxes?
In the last five years demand for our services has been fueled by three factors. One is increases in state and local income taxes, particularly on the wealthy. The progressive movement has fueled the increase of high-income taxes on the uber wealthy. I wouldn't deny that states need revenue to perform services that we expect, but the burden for that has increasingly been visited upon the wealthy and the uber wealthy.
The second was the Federal Tax and Jobs Act which curtailed the Federal tax deduction for state and local taxes so that only $10,000 of those taxes could be deducted each year that took away a federal tax subsidy.
The third was COVID. COVID has been a life changing event for many people. Individuals wanting to accelerate their moves from high to low tax jurisdictions. If you can live anywhere, why would you want to live in a place where you have to pay the most taxes?
Chris Doyle transcript:
John McGinnis
Topic: Progressives Makeover the Legal Academy
Bio: George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law
Reading: Lawyers for Radical Change is here
Opening Remarks:
I'm going to talk about the change in the ideology of lawyers and how that has affected the nation and legal education. At the beginning of our republic, lawyers were an extremely important class. De Tocqueville, the greatest observer of American society, thought that lawyers filled the function of nobles and princes in society. They were talented, a meritocratic class. They were going to be conservers of the Constitution. That’s the reason that judicial review was given to the Supreme Court.
Alexander Hamilton, the most famous defender of judicial review, the idea that the court can strike down statutes inconsistent with the Constitution. And his argument was that it would be staffed by lawyers, a few who would be extremely knowledgeable, and would be bound down by rules and precedent and not their own preferences.
For many years, there were restraints on democratic excess up through the New Deal. They also were very much against court packing.
But then, as society changed, lawyers changed. As we had a much larger regulatory state, lawyers changed their interests. They no longer got their income from private law. They got transfer payments for more regulations. Moreover, as the court permitted the declaration of new kinds of rights, lawyers saw another opportunity to be tribunes of the people, the opposite, of what they were thought in Tocqueville's time.
The American Bar Association, the ABA, the guild of lawyers, showed its changing views. They opposed Robert Bork. They said he was unqualified to be on the Supreme Court, this professor at Yale Law School, Solicitor General of the United States, who wrote the most important book on anti-trust law. They endorsed Roe v. Wade, and that was a decision which, a famous supporter of abortion rights, John Hart Ely, said was not Constitutional law, and it showed no sense of an obligation to be so.
Today, ABA resolutions look like a wish list of the Democratic Party, the minimum wage, making sure that biologically male athletes who identify as women can compete in women's sports. Things you might not think lawyers have much expertise in but certainly signal their ideological position.
For a long time, the ABA has had an important part in accrediting law schools. And for the early years, lawyers acted like an economic guild. What they were most interested was making sure they were paid well, so they raised the costs of legal education, so a classic barrier to entry.
The Justice Department prevented this through anti-trust laws. What the ABA has done now is shift its power. No longer can it interfere economically with law schools, so it does so ideologically. Already, law schools, lean to the left. The ABA now requires diversity to hire people of minority races and women.
There's pressure from the ABA to become more left wing than law schools would otherwise be. They also recently required that every law school has to have lectures on race. You have to have, quote, "cross-cultural competency," required lectures at law school.
And here's what a group of senior Yale Law professors said about it. They observed that the new proposed requirements will institutionalize dogma. It'll mandate instructions in matters that are unrelated to any legal skill. One can certainly imagine their effect on legal education. Because legal education are the gatekeepers of lawyers, the class that Tocqueville thought was so important to conserving the republic. And now this gatekeeping function is likely going to shape lawyers to be contrary to the conserving force that Tocqueville imagined.
John McGinnis transcript:
Not Paying Taxes in NY & Law Schools Go Woke