Stevenson more than fulfilled the requirements for a speaker at the TED2012 conference, where “the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less).” His moving, highly personal March 5 speech, recalling his grandmother’s words and the effect they had on him as a child, would be familiar to any student who has attended one of Stevenson’s annual Public Interest Law Center lectures, for he touched on his favorite themes of impressionability, hope, rehabilitation, and humanity. For the 1,400-seat TED audience, each of whom paid $7,500 to attend the conference, the talk “inspired one of the longest and loudest standing ovations in TED’s history,” according to its founder, Chris Anderson. It also moved them to pledge $1.12 million to support a campaign that Stevenson said from the stage would “end excessive sentencing of children and stop the practice of putting kids in adult jails and prisons, where they are 10 times more likely than other incarcerated people to be the victims of sexual assault and violence.”

Only three weeks later, Stevenson would argue that mandatory life-without-parole sentencing schemes for juveniles convicted of homicide are cruel and unusual punishment and therefore unconstitutional. The Court’s 5–4 combined decision in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, released in June, builds upon earlier Eighth Amendment arguments Stevenson has been making for nearly his entire legal career against capital punishment and what he calls death-in-prison sentences.

Stevenson began representing death row prisoners in 1985, four years before founding the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), where he is executive director. He and his staff provide legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have not received fair and just treatment in the criminal justice system. About five years ago, the mission of EJI, located in Montgomery, Alabama, expanded beyond capital defense to include life-without-parole sentences for juveniles.

In 2009, Stevenson argued Sullivan v. Florida—his third appearance before the Supreme Court. He laid the foundation for his position then when he argued that children under 18 should not be sentenced to die in prison for non-homicide crimes. He pointed to evidence indicating that children differ significantly from adult offenders in terms of level of maturity and a sense of responsibility, making mandatory life in prison a form of cruel and unusual punishment. While the Court ultimately declined to decide Sullivan, it upheld Stevenson’s reasoning in a companion case, Graham v. Florida, argued along similar lines the same day. Justice Elena Kagan’s majority opinion in Miller, released in June, invoked Graham as precedent: “While Graham’s flat ban on life without parole was for non-homicide crimes, nothing that Graham said about children is crime-specific.”

Coming from a Court not known to sympathize with criminal defendants, the recent decisions provide capital defenders with renewed hope. “Having the U.S. Supreme Court make announcements about what just can’t happen consistent with the Eighth Amendment was momentous,” says Cathleen Price, EJI’s cooperating senior attorney. “It’s momentous for that mission, for our national community, for our conversation about how to deal with criminal behavior.”

Stevenson is not one to dwell on his own achievements—at the Supreme Court level or otherwise—although even he allows that it has been “a very eventful year.” Instead, he maintains a longer-term view. “Throughout most of my career I’ve been trying to advocate for a more hopeful perspective on how we think about difficult and complex problems,” he says, before turning to the same stirring themes he sounded with the TED audience. “I do think that we can’t afford to reduce people to their worst acts. We can’t afford to engage in harsh judgments without an appreciation of the complexity of human existence. It really is when people fail, when they fall down, when they’re struggling, when they offend that we test our core values and principles. I talk about it differently in different settings, but I hope it reflects the same vision that a just society needs to be just to everyone, not just the powerful and the privileged.”

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Three weeks earlier, Harold Koh, legal adviser to the State Department, called Cohen out of the blue on a Monday morning. Cohen, one of the foremost scholars in the U.S. of Chinese law, had been following the news about his friend Chen—the daring nighttime escape from detention in Chen’s home in Shandong, the secret journey to Beijing, and Chen’s taking refuge at the U.S. Embassy—but had no clue that he himself was about to be entangled in the diplomatic standoff between the U.S. and China. Koh and Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, asked if Cohen could advise Chen.

The U.S. negotiators had already hammered out a deal with Chinese officials: Chen could spend two years studying in China, followed by a third year in the U.S. But Chen wasn’t convinced. If he took the deal, he would be risking his safety and freedom. He asked to speak to Cohen, his old friend in New York.

The two men had met for the first time in 2003 in the U.S., when the self-taught legal advocate, who fought on behalf of the disabled and victims of forced abortions and sterilizations, was a guest of the U.S. State Department. Chen so impressed Cohen that their 30-minute appointment grew into a four-hour conversation. At that initial meeting, says Cohen, “I could see that he could become a Gandhi figure for China as an authentic child of the rural Chinese masses.”

Koh and Campbell put Chen on the phone with Cohen that day. “I was feeling anxious because I knew the U.S. government wanted him to take this choice,” says Cohen. “On the other hand, it’s a heavy responsibility to tell someone to take a risk while I sit here safely in New York.”

In a long conversation, Chen repeatedly told Cohen that he felt “feichang buanchuan”—very unsafe. Upon hearing this, Cohen advised Chen to stay in the embassy. But the next day, Chen seemed more confident, and Cohen discussed with him various options for staying in China, including convincing President Obama to guarantee his interest in Chen’s welfare. By Wednesday, Chen had accepted the deal and left the U.S. Embassy, only to change his mind within hours: He wanted to go to the U.S.

With a full-blown diplomatic tempest marring long-planned trade and strategy talks, both nations looked for a way out. Just one part of the deal still seemed viable: Could Chen go immediately to the U.S. to
study? Cohen said the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, which he co-directs, would be thrilled to host the activist.

By Friday, Chinese officials had stated that Chen, like any other Chinese citizen, was free to apply to study abroad. Though details would be hammered out over the next two weeks, the crisis was over.

For Cohen, this episode showed just how much U.S.-China relations had evolved. In 1992, Cohen was among those who tried to intervene on behalf of human rights activist Wei Jingsheng, but China did not permit Wei to leave the country for five years. In Chen’s case, it took just five days. “Human rights continues to be an area of disagreement,” says Cohen, “but under pressure China can be practical, even if it means a certain loss of face—and the U.S. put a lot of pressure on China in public.”

Still in daily contact, Cohen remains an adviser to Chen. So what tips has he given his most famous advisee for navigating law school? “To learn, to take advantage of the fabulous reception NYU has given him,” says the professor. “To try to conduct himself in a way to leave open the possibility of return to China.”

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Rabb has continued to accrue honors; most recently, she was won a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to research criminal law reform in the Muslim world. She is also currently working on a book, The Burden and Benefit of Doubt: Legal Maxims in Islamic Law, which explores the question of how judges make decisions in Islamic legal contexts when the legal texts do not contain clear directions.

In addition to teaching courses on Islamic Law at the Law School, Rabb will also be co-convening the Constitutional Transitions colloquium alongside Professor Sujit Choudhry. In this year’s colloquium, “The Middle East Revolutions,” Rabb hopes to look at the effects of recent developments in the Middle East on the fields of comparative constitutionalism and Islamic constitutionalism. “What does it mean for a constitution to say that Islam is the source of law?” Rabb asks. “And how does that actually translate to laws on the ground, to interbranch relations and judicial review, and to the task of interpretation itself with constitutions containing elements from the Islamic and liberal democratic traditions?”

Rabb is excited to be exploring these issues at NYU, where she is impressed both by the “institutional vibrancy, intellectual resources, and diverse student body,” as well as the commitment to provide programming and training for faculty and students interested in Islamic comparative constitutional law.

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A model of efficiency in the classroom, he answers questions briefly, keeps the class moving, and has been known to give a crash course in microeconomics in one session. “Whereas other professors go off on tangents, every word he says is valuable. There is no excess,” says Kendall Turner, a student at Stanford Law School, where Sykes has taught since 2005.

Not one to beat around the bush, if he’s unhappy with his co-author’s work, Sykes will delete or rewrite it, says frequent co-writer Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School. Likewise, his straight-shooting approach is reflected in the content of his scholarship. “A lot of international legal scholars write about the world as they wish it were rather than the way it actually is. He’s very skeptical about work that is utopian and too idealistic for states to actually pay attention to,” says Posner, who shares his view.

That pragmatism, coupled international law generally and international trade law specifically that has reshaped the discipline. “He’s really created the modern scholarship in this field,” says Daniel Fischel, also at Chicago. “International law was not looked at in a systematic, analytical, and organized way. He took this hugely important area—dealing with trade agreements between countries, issues of treaties—and analyzed them most rigorously.”

Sykes, who joins the faculty this fall, made a splash in 1984 with “The Economics of Vicarious Liability” (Yale Law Journal), a nontechnical version of a chapter in his economics Ph.D. dissertation. The piece examines when it is economically efficient for one party to be held liable for the conduct of another simply because of the relationship between them (such as employer-employee). In 1995, he coauthored Legal Problems of International Economic Relations—now in its fifth edition—the field’s gold-standard casebook.

More recently, Sykes’s work in the economics of international trade law upends conventional wisdom. In “Currency Manipulation and World Trade” (World Trade Review, 2010), Sykes and co-author Robert Staiger question the commonly held view that Chinese currency practices significantly distort trade. They argue that the effects of unexpected devaluations decay over time and depend in the short run on how goods are priced.

Currently, Sykes and Posner are collaborating on a book, Economic Foundations of International Law (Harvard University Press, 2012). Its overriding objective is to use economic analysis to shed light on international law across a range of subject areas, including trade and investment, monetary law, international criminal law, and even the law of war. While there is no single conclusion, the authors show how international law responds to a wide range of externalities, some of which are far more amenable to solutions than others.

“He’s one of the few scholars in international trade law that combines law and economics, and does so in a readily accessible way. His forthcoming book will undoubtedly become the seminal reference work on international economic law,” says Michael Trebilcock, chair in Law and Economics at the University of Toronto. Sykes, 57, was brought up in a middle-class suburb of Washington, D.C., with his younger brother, Edward. His father and namesake was a scientist for the U.S. Department of Defense. His late mother, Emily, left her position as a defense department mathematician to raise her children.

Sykes was a studious kid who played the oboe. In high school, he added debate to the mix. “Most of the popular kids were the athletes. That was not me,” he says.

Entering William & Mary without a clue as to what he wanted to study, Sykes took a smattering of classes and realized that “economics resonated. It wasn’t soft and mushy, and it seemed relevant.” He also joined the debating team, where he met Maureen Gorman. They married in 1980 and have two children: Madeleine, 20, a junior at New York University, and Sophie, 17. Maureen is a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown.

In 1976, after graduating Phi Beta Kappa and with honors, he spent six years at Yale studying economics and law. Sykes earned his J.D. in 1982 and became a litigator at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., which exposed him to international trade law. “I had a great time and could have imagined staying there,” he says. But Fischel and Judge Frank Easterbrook (then at the University of Chicago Law School), impressed by Sykes’s editing of an article of theirs at the Yale Law Journal, wooed him. “The chance to do law and economics at the University of Chicago was just too exciting to turn down,” Sykes says. He taught at Chicago for 20 years, finishing his doctorate in economics along the way.

Outside of academics, he and his wife like to travel, but not far off the beaten track. “Our idea of rustic is a Motel 6,” he says. Yet don’t let the regular-guy image fool you. He wears the apron strings in the family, and cooks a variety of spicy Indian curries and other ethnic foods. He likes a good bottle of wine, plays golf and poker, and has a great sense of humor—even at his own expense.

In a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most famous role, Sykes stars in a Stanford law student video spoof called The Tortinator. Amid a blaze of fire and menacing music, Sykes strides through the door, and is met by students asking about proximate cause and strict liability. He answers in the somewhat robotic way that is characteristic of his manner in class. Sykes says, “I try not to take myself or anyone else too seriously.”

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“There are some people who watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show over and over, then there’s Adam,” says Lior Strahilevitz of the University of Chicago Law School.

Fueled by his passion for politics, Samaha, 42, who joins NYU Law this fall, is rapidly becoming one of the nation’s leading scholars in constitutional law and theory. “If you’re attending a workshop with Adam, it almost doesn’t matter who the speaker is. His questions are great and he genuinely loves the law,” says Rachel Barkow, Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy.

Samaha manages to find fresh perspectives in much-dissected themes of constitutional law. In “Undue Process” (Stanford Law Review, 2006), inspired by attending long condo board meetings, he wonders not whether there is enough due process but why we’re not concerned with too much process. “These are not questions that anyone in constitutional law had ever thought to ask before,” says Daryl Levinson, David Boies Professor of Law.

Samaha’s recent scholarship examines decision-making within legal institutions when people face deep disagreement and uncertainty. In “Randomization in Adjudication” (William and Mary Law Review, 2009), Samaha asks why judges won’t flip a coin to decide the merits of a case, but will accept case assignments via random lotteries. “Some cases that are quite similar are going to come out differently just because one judge is assigned rather than another,” he says.

In a similar vein, “On Law’s Tiebreakers” (University of Chicago Law Review, 2010) explores how legal institutions, which have a unique commitment to avoiding ties, make a decision when one option is not clearly better than another. Samaha concludes that flipping a coin may be best because “it is a cheap and decisive tool that does not waste any relevant information.”

He also weighs in on how regulations are some times adopted to avoid the appearance of wrongdoing. In “Regulation for the Sake of Appearance” (Harvard Law Review, 2012) he develops a framework for evaluating claims that a government decision is justified because it will create a desirable appearance, citing campaign finance regulations as an example. “It turns out that there is some empirical evidence to suggest that an appearance of corruption or non-corruption will influence the reality,” he says, “but with no guarantee that a desirable reality will follow a pleasant appearance in this setting.”

Samaha was raised in suburban Minneapolis by his dad, Joel, a University of Minnesota sociology professor, and his mom, Jennifer, a social worker. Aside from being “a little bit of a rule breaker” in his youth, he had an ordinary childhood except for the onset of a rare neurological disorder. At age 8, he was diagnosed with dystonia, which manifests itself in repetitive movements and abnormal postures, but he did not let the disorder slow him down. He ran cross-country in middle school, played tennis in high school, and had a tight group of friends with whom he took road trips to both the East and West coasts. “He has always been witty and fun, with an appetite for the unconventional and unpredictable,” said long-time pal Minnesota State Representative Steve Simon. Samaha even served up his wedding rehearsal dinner with a double feature at a one-time movie theater turned event hall.

Although there is no cure for dystonia, Samaha refuses drug therapy because a potential side effect is confusion. “I wouldn’t accept that tradeoff—interference with my ability to think about the world in exchange for my ability to physically move through the world.”

Samaha attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he received a Truman Scholarship and honed his extemporaneous wit as a disc jockey for the college radio station. He spent his junior year in Sweden “to experience a different kind of democracy.” Graduating summa cum laude in 1992 with a double major in history and government, Samaha seemed set on a career in politics.

From 1992 to 1993 he worked as a research assistant at Clinton-Gore National Campaign Headquarters, a writer for the Minnesota House of Representatives, and a speechwriter for the U.S. Department of Energy. But the superficiality of politics left him dissatisfied. Suspecting he’d find law more meaningful, he attended Harvard Law School, where he received the Fay Diploma and the Sears Prize. “He was one of the brightest students I’d taught in a number of years,” recalls Laurence Tribe.

Earning his J.D. in 1996, Samaha clerked for Chief Justice Alexander Keith of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. He went to work for Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi in Minneapolis, where he assisted the litigation team in a $6 billion landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry, but felt a calling to academia.

He started his academic career in 1999 part-time at the University of Minnesota Law School, and like his dad, who twice won distinguished teaching awards, was ranked among the top four professors in overall teaching ability for three consecutive years. In 2007 he won the Graduating Students Award for Teaching Excellence at the University of Chicago Law School, where he started in 2004. “Good teachers offer encouraging words. But great teachers, like Professor Samaha, challenge students to think more carefully, to push beyond settled and comfortable ideas, and to achieve new understandings,” says former student Mitha Rao. “He remains unmatched.”

Samaha is devoted to his research and family. And sometimes, there’s synergy between the two. When considering baby names for their now two-year-old son, he and his artist wife, Abby, fed their favorite names into a computerized randomization program to yield a huge number of three-name permutations. The exercise was merely for inspiration. “Randomization is a sensible decision tool in some situations. But I won’t flip a coin to decide whether Oscar needs a diaper change.”

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Kamin gave the number and an explanation. Everyone took it as fact, and moved on.

“Regardless of who is in the room, there’s one authoritative voice when it comes to the budget, and that’s David,” says the NEC’s Michael Pyle, special assistant to the president for financial and international markets. Even Geithner has been known to reach outside of his staff to seek Kamin’s advice. “David Kamin has been making invaluable contributions on budget and tax policy since the very beginning of this administration. His deep knowledge of the numbers and intricacies of the budget has helped win him the respect of the entire economic team,” says Geithner.

Before leaving his NEC position as special assistant to the president for economic policy to join the faculty of his alma mater this fall, Kamin, 31, had made a significant impact on important legislation. He influenced Obama’s healthcare law, and the continuation of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. He played a role in resolving the debt crisis last year and in crafting each of the president’s budgets. He was one of the main authors of Obama’s plan to rescue the U.S. Postal Service from bankruptcy. While by all accounts he is cool under fire, “I’m looking forward to getting a little bit off of the high-wire act,” Kamin says of his move to academia.

Kamin’s scholarship, an outgrowth of his real-world work, shows how budget and tax metrics can deeply influence policy debates, even as they are frequently misunderstood. In “What Is a Progressive Tax Change? Unmasking Hidden Values in Distributional Debates” (NYU Law Review, 2008), Kamin asks what it means for a tax change to be progressive or regressive. He delves into underlying theories of tax fairness and concludes that measures of progressivity are often used in misleading or incoherent ways.

“Risky Returns: Accounting for Risk in the Federal Budget” has yet to be published but, according to colleagues, is nonetheless widely debated in the capital. It argues against the emerging consensus that federal budgeting should take into account the “cost of risk”—the amount that the private market would demand to bear uncertainty. Doing so dramatically increases the price tag on many federal programs. When the bailout was budgeted this way, for example, the cost was doubled. Kamin argues that this adjustment undermines the budget as a measure of the federal government’s fiscal position and confuses cost-benefit analysis with budgeting.

Kamin’s love of policy and public service is born and bred. His father, Alan, now retired, was a judge in the Arizona Superior Court for 20 years after having served as an assistant attorney general. Trained as a tax lawyer, he once worked for Ralph Nader on tax reform. Kamin’s mother, Carol, now a public policy consultant, served three Arizona governors and was the director of the first-ever Governor’s Office for Children. “Public policy and law would define our conversations around the dining room table,” says Kamin, who has an older brother, Daniel.

In high school, Kamin ran cross-country and still runs six miles each morning, but otherwise was a bit of a nerd. “My mother set up a high school class trip to visit the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in Washington, D.C.,” he recalls. “I found it fascinating.”

Kamin earned his bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Swarthmore College, giving the commencement address in 2002. He then worked at the Committee for Economic Development in Washington, followed by two years as a research assistant at the CBPP, where he learned how to “spreadsheet a budget,” and worked on some projects with Peter Orszag, then at the Brookings Institution. He attended NYU Law in part because he was offered a Furman Academic Scholarship (founded by Jason Furman’s family), an opportunity that provided an intellectual community and support system for those preparing to enter academia. “I loved the idea of being able to sit in seminars discussing papers on a variety of legal topics from the get-go,” says Kamin. His enthusiasm for tax law and policy was evident to all. “He’s possibly the best student I’ve had,” says Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation Daniel Shaviro. Clayton Gillette, Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law, concurs: “His comments were so thoughtful and so provocative that I often felt that I was the student.”

Kamin was sitting in class during his final semester in the fall of 2008 when he received a phone call. It was Orszag, newly appointed director of the OMB, asking him to serve as his special assistant. At the OMB, Kamin would attend meetings with Orszag, Geithner, and then-NEC director Lawrence Summers. “It was the moment I had always hoped for. To be able to inform those kinds of discussions. But to have it happen that quickly—there was this moment of ‘Wow. I’m actually sitting here,’” recalls Kamin, who commuted back from D.C. to take his finals.

From the start, Kamin was a standout. Most White House staffers attended meetings with a notebook. “But David always wanted to have his numbers close at hand,” says Avi Feller, who worked with Kamin at the OMB. “He’d pull out his laptop and was prepared with every spreadsheet you could imagine.” Indeed, there was a stretch of time during Obama’s transition when the sole repository of the nation’s new budget was Kamin’s laptop.

Kamin married Heather Weyrick, 32, in 2004. In many ways, they couldn’t be more different. As a freelance TV producer, Weyrick has worked on everything from travel shows to a piece on cupcakes. “She rounds me out. There’s no doubt she’s the cooler half of this marriage,” he says. “She is the one who brings pop culture into my life, but I’m still somewhat ignorant.” In August, the couple welcomed their first child, Iris. Their dog, Mitzi, and cat, Kitty, are adjusting. Having spent the last few years within a three-block radius of the White House, Kamin is enjoying being back in New York. “Some people dream to be an astronaut,” says Kamin. “I dreamed to be a public policy wonk, and I got to live that out.”

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Over the 18-year history of the annual lists, 17 of Kahan’s articles and 12 of Choi’s have been recognized by their peers, making Kahan and Choi first and second, respectively, among all the authors selected since the poll began in 1994.

Two of Kahan’s articles appear on this year’s list. “When the Government Is the Controlling Shareholder,” from the Texas Law Review, concerns the recent corporate bailouts and shows that existing accountability structures do not provide sufficient protection of minority shareholder interests; it ends by hoping “this anomalous era of government control comes to a speedy conclusion.” “The Insignificance of Proxy Access,” from the Virginia Law Review, argues that shareholder access to the proxy will result in some increase in company expenses, but may only rarely have an impact on governance and only a marginal impact on company value. Both articles were written with Edward Rock of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Choi’s top-10 entry this year, “Motions for Lead Plaintiff in Securities Class Actions” in the Journal of Legal Studies, examines securities class actions filed from 2003 to 2005. It reports evidence that plaintiffs’ attorneys retain significant control over the selection of lead plaintiff, and that plaintiffs’ attorneys with greater power are able to negotiate higher attorneys’ fees as a percentage of the recovery while working fewer hours.

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Scholars had already developed comparative models for this problem using Northern Ireland and Bosnia, but while in Sri Lanka, Choudhry was unable to access this work. “I did the best I could,” he says.

For comparative constitutional specialists, fieldwork usually involves little advance notice, minimal support, and a bare-bones technology infrastructure. “This sense of being at sea and not being able to get to the knowledge that already exists is an experience that a lot of advisers have,” says Choudhry. Without the relevant research, advisers are hampered in their efforts to inform and counsel.

To address this problem, the professor has launched the Center for Constitutional Transitions, an academic center that will provide research support and infrastructure for scholars in the field—in short, a back office that also produces scholarship. Staffed by 12 J.D.s and eight LL.M.s based in New York and eight researchers in Cairo and Beirut, the center will first tackle approximately three projects for the Cairo office of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). Two projects have emerged already: One will focus on how constitutions in Middle Eastern and North African countries should regulate political parties, while another will explore the question of executive-legislative relations in the context of the Arab Spring. The LL.M.s in particular, many of whom have held clerkships in their home countries, are a major strength of the clinic, says Choudhry.

The center has already hosted two events this spring: a symposium about the trajectories of Arab constitutionalism and an event focusing on current constitutional reforms in Turkey. Scholars came from American as well as Turkish universities.

Although the Arab Spring has dominated recent headlines, constitutional design is an evergreen field, and Choudhry’s longterm vision for Constitutional Transitions includes expanding beyond the Middle East. He hopes international agencies will be attracted to his center’s value proposition: the ability to dramatically enhance the existing efforts with a research infrastructure. International IDEA, the center’s first client, will fund a fellow who will oversee students at the center.

Choudhry first piloted the idea for a research back office on a trip to Nepal in 2010. Enlisting the help of a law student in Toronto, who wrote memos for Choudhry each night, the law professor was able to deliver a successful talk about self-determination in the context of Nepal’s indigenous peoples. Because Choudhry was so well prepared, he was able to reframe the conversation by puncturing some myths about the international laws regarding the self-determination of indigenous peoples. “Knowledge is power,” says Choudhry.

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In National Meat Association v. Harris, the trade association sued California over its law banning the slaughter and inhumane treatment of non-ambulatory animals in federally regulated slaughterhouses. The organization contended that the Federal Meat Inspection Act preempted the California penal code, which requires slaughterhouses to immediately euthanize a non-ambulatory pig, in conflict with the federal regulation that requires slaughterhouses to hold non-ambulatory animals for observation to identify evidence of disease.

Arguing for the petitioner, Hills said that regulating a certain category of animal interferes with the operations of a slaughterhouse: “For the states to define a type of animal in terms of the very ailment over which the feds have exclusive jurisdiction is to circumvent preemption through a pretext.”

Representing the respondent, Sharkey asserted that “states have the prerogative to regulate, if they so choose, anything going on with respect to animals on farms and as a general matter, and the federal government has no interest at the present time in doing so.”

Smith and Epstein deliberated publicly through open microphones for the audience. Epstein felt that while the trade association might win on the merits of the case, it had not demonstrated irreparable harm. Smith was even more ambivalent: “It’s a close case. If it’s a pure ethical problem like ‘We don’t kill horses,’ that’s an easy case, and if it’s a pure health problem like ‘We’re going to inspect for mad cow disease,’ that’s easy the other way. I’m not quite sure whether a non-ambulatory pig is more like a mad cow or a horse.”

While the moot judges stopped short of a firm ruling, they both expected the Supreme Court to uphold the Ninth Circuit ruling for the defendants. “My guess is it will be affirmed,” said Epstein. “I would affirm it and I would go to bed feeling very uneasy about the decision.” He need not have worried, however. Four months later, the Supreme Court rejected the earlier circuit decision, ruling 9–0 for the National Meat Association.

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Steines acknowledges that he has accepted a huge undertaking: “I am deeply honored to follow in the footsteps of Jim and of Boris Bittker and am keenly aware of the enormity of creating a new edition that reflects the last decade of incredibly complicated tax law with style and substance worthy of its predecessors.” Not only does he have decades of experience and scholarship in tax law, but he also had a long working relationship with Eustice that he can refer to. Steines co-taught a course on consolidated tax returns with Eustice and William Lesse Castleberry, and for many years Steines and Eustice were counsel to the tax practice at Cooley. Adjunct Professor Stephen Gardner (LL.M. ’65) applauded the selection of Steines, saying, “He will bring both his vast experience in corporate taxation and his extensive collaboration with Jim Eustice to the maintenance of this unparalleled work.”

Steines is the author of the casebook International Aspects of U.S. Income Taxation as well as articles on corporate, partnership, and international tax issues. A former editor-in- chief of the Tax Law Review, he has provided expert testimony on tax-related controversies and instructed IRS employees. Given all of this experience, he compares the tremendous task of updating the treatise with gardening. “The book is a diverse vineyard with ancient vines in need of gentle pruning and newer cultures that need more light,” he says. “I look forward to the gardening and am committed to maintaining the book’s preeminence.”

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