Did you know YOU can hear a CALI Podcast faster than you pack for Spring Break? The podcasts are 10-minutes audio recordings of law professors explaining narrow legal topics in a straightforward manner.

Classroom discussion focuses heavily on cases. However, end of semester final exams don't normally reference cases. Many students don't know how cases operate on final exams. This lesson helps students understand where cases fit in a final exam answer and develop arguments based on cases. Students' exam arguments should improve using this lesson's techniques.

This lesson will cover how to conduct legal research about the constitutions of individual states, online and in print.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the lesson, the student will be able to:

1. Locate specific provisions of state constitutions.
2. Find cases that interpret provisions of state constitutions by using annotated statutes.
3. Find secondary materials about state constitutions by using annotated statutes.
4. List features of the amendment process for state constitutions.

If you are just starting law school, or thinking about doing so soon, it can often feel like you need to learn a foreign language. Not to mention all the abbreviations, odd acronyms, and more! This lesson is designed to help you get started on mastering the brand new language that is the field of law.

For the past 31 years, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) has hosted its own legal education conference called "CALIcon." The CALIcon conference is a two-day event held at newly renovated or built law schools. It draws an estimated 300 attendees: law faculty, law librarians, IT professionals, distance learning staff, and law school administrators. The goal of the conference is to provide a unique environment for everyone to come together to share ideas, innovations, experiences, and best practices for application in law school classrooms to engage law students with tech.

This book is designed to provide guidance to law students as they prepare to embark upon bar study. It covers topics such as how to make a study plan, strategies for successful bar study, tips for attacking each portion of the exam, taking care of your mental health, and preparing your loved ones for bar study. The book also provides weekly tips for use during the bar study period, and for exam day itself. The quick reference format allows students to easily access advice for whatever is most pressing to them at a particular moment.

 Creative Commons licensed. Peer-reviewed. 100% Free.

This is the ninth version of this textbook, updated through December 2021 for use beginning January 2022. 

In addition to incorporating new law and all inflation adjustments, this edition incorporates new charts pertaining to economic and tax data, including December 2019 CBO charts showing that income inequality between 2015 and 2020 (with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted in 2017) worsened after taxes and transfers than before taxes and transfers are taken into account. 

This textbook is not intended to be an exhaustive treatise; rather, it is intended to be far more useful than that for beginning tax law students by equipping the novice not merely with unmoored detail but rather with a rich blueprint that illuminates the deeper structural framework on which that detail hangs (sometimes crookedly). Chapter 1 outlines the conceptual meaning of the term income for uniquely tax purposes and examines the Internal Revenue Code provisions that translate this construct into positive law. Chapter 2 explores various forms of consumption taxation because the modern Internal Revenue Code is best perceived as a hybrid income-consumption tax that also contains many provisions that are inconsistent with both forms of taxation. Chapter 3 then provides students with the story of how we got to where we are today, important context about the distribution of the tax burden, the budget, and economic trends, as well as material on ethical debates, economic theories, and politics as they affect taxation.

Armed with this larger blueprint, students are in a much better position to evaluate the myriad pieces that follow throughout the remaining 18 chapters. For example, they are in a better position to appreciate how applying the income tax rules for debt to a debt-financed investment afforded more favorable consumption tax treatment creates tax shelter problems. Stated another way, they can better appreciate how the tax system can sometimes be used to generate (or combat) unfair and economically inefficient rent-seeking behavior. 
 

444,851 Words, 726 pages in PDF.  Published December 2021

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