Faculty

After graduating from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1974, Brookes Billman LLM ’75 came to NYU School of Law for an LLM in taxation. Upon completing his legal education, Billman practiced in Washington, DC, before returning to New York to pursue an academic career at the Law School. He has written extensively in the area of tax law (most recently publishing two editions of a casebook on tax procedure) and teaches a wide range of tax courses to both JD and LLM students. In addition, Billman teaches Employee Benefits Law as well as Legislation and the Regulatory State in the JD curriculum. Billman served for many years as a Law School administrator, first as director of the Graduate Tax Program, then as associate dean of the Graduate Division, and finally as associate dean for Planning and Technology. In the latter role, Billman directed the Law School’s early initiatives in upgrading classrooms and seminar rooms to include the latest pedagogical technology and served as faculty chair of the Building Committee for the construction of Furman Hall and the renovation of Vanderbilt Hall.

Since 2010, Joshua Blank has served as professor of tax practice and faculty director of the Graduate Tax Program at NYU School of Law. Blank’s scholarship focuses on tax administration and compliance, taxpayer privacy and tax transparency, and taxation of business entities. His scholarly articles have appeared in University of Pennsylvania Law Review, UCLA Law Review, New York University Law Review, Emory Law Journal, and Tax Law Review, among others. Blank’s research has been profiled by the mainstream media, including the New York Times, Reuters, and Forbes. In 2014, Blank received the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award from NYU Law. Blank served as vice chair of the Teaching Taxation Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association from 2009 to 2013. From 2008 to 2009, Blank was an assistant professor of law at Rutgers School of Law–Newark. From 2006 to 2008, he served as an acting assistant professor of tax law at NYU Law. Prior to entering academia, Blank was a tax lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Noël Cunningham LLM ’75 has been a member of the NYU School of Law faculty since 1975. He served as director of the Graduate Tax Program from 1988 to 1995 and again from 2003 to 2008. Cunningham’s scholarship has focused primarily on tax policy and the taxation of partnerships. In tax policy, he has written on a variety of controversial topics, including imputed income, the concept of ownership in taxation, the merits of the case for a capital gains preference, and, most recently, corporate tax reform. In partnership taxation, one of the most challenging areas in tax law, he has co-authored The Logic of Subchapter K: A Conceptual Guide to the Taxation of Partnerships (fifth edition forthcoming fall, 2016), which introduces the uninitiated to this intriguing area of the law. In addition to his teaching at the Law School, Cunningham has taught at Harvard Law School, Hastings College of the Law, and the University of Virginia School of Law. He also served on the staff of the US Treasury’s Office of the Tax Legislative Counsel from 1980 to 1982.

In 1986, Harvey Dale, an expert in international tax law, began examining the viability of creating a program that studied the legal issues affecting nonprofit organizations. Two years of thorough research later, Dale determined that such a program was indeed viable and redirected his professional efforts to establish the Program on Philanthropy and the Law at NYU School of Law. Now known as the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law, it explores a broad range of legal issues that impact the nation’s nonprofit sector and boasts a library with the most comprehensive collection of resources ever assembled on the subject of nonprofit law. After teaching international, corporate, and tax law for almost two decades, Dale is now a recognized expert and leader in the field of nonprofit law, both in this country and abroad. Dale is the founding president of the Atlantic Philanthropies and was for about 20 years the president and CEO of the Atlantic Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as a director or trustee for a number of nonprofit organizations.

David Kamin ’09 joined NYU School of Law in 2012. His scholarship focuses on tax and budget policy, and he has published on issues ranging from the tax code’s effect on inequality and poverty to the role of budget baselines in the legislative process. Before joining NYU Law, Kamin worked in President Obama’s administration. From 2010-2012, he served as special assistant to the president for economic policy at the White House. There, Kamin helped coordinate administration policy on federal tax and budget issues as well as other areas including unemployment insurance, infrastructure, and the postal service. Prior to serving as special assistant to the president, Kamin worked as special assistant, and later adviser, to the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, helping formulate policy for President Obama’s first two budgets. Kamin earned a BA in economics and political science with highest honors from Swarthmore College in 2002. He earned a JD magna cum laude from NYU Law in 2009.

After graduating from law school, Mitchell Kane clerked for the Honorable Karen LeCraft Henderson of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. He then worked as an associate in the tax department of Covington & Burling. His current research focuses on tax and economic development, tax and climate policy, and transfer pricing. Kane joined the NYU School of Law faculty in 2008 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he had taught since 2003. Kane received a BA from Yale University in 1993, a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1996, and an MA from the University of Virginia in 1997.

A 1971 graduate of NYU School of Law, Laurie Malman returned in 1979 to begin her teaching career. Prior to joining the NYU Law faculty, she spent seven years as a tax associate at Sullivan & Cromwell. In 1986, Malman became a full professor, and since then she has spoken and taught extensively around the country. Malman teaches in the JD and LLM programs, and her current teaching focuses on individual income tax issues, property transactions, and corporate tax. In addition to writing several scholarly articles, Malman recently published a second edition of The Individual Tax Base: Cases, Problems, and Policies in Federal Taxation (2010), in which she brings together overarching policy concerns and practical problems.

H. David Rosenbloom became director of the International Tax Program in 2002. He is a member of Caplin & Drysdale, a law firm he rejoined in 1981 after serving as international tax counsel and director of the Office of International Tax Affairs in the US Department of the Treasury from 1978 to 1981. Rosenbloom graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude in 1962 and, after a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florence in Italy, attended Harvard Law School. He graduated magna cum laude in 1966 and was president of Volume 79 of the Harvard Law Review. Rosenbloom served as assistant to Ambassador Arthur Goldberg at the US Mission to the United Nations, then as clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. A frequent speaker and author on tax subjects, Rosenbloom has taught international taxation and related subjects at the law schools at Stanford, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard, and at educational institutions in Taipei, Mexico City, Milan, Bergamo, Sydney, Mainz, Heidelberg, Rio de Janeiro, Pretoria, Leiden, Melbourne, Bologna, Neuchatel, Vienna, and Lisbon. He has also served as a tax policy adviser for the US Treasury, the OECD, USAID, and the World Bank in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Senegal, Malawi, and South Africa.

Deborah Schenk LLM ’76 joined the faculty at NYU School of Law in 1985. A former faculty director of the Graduate Tax Program, Schenk has long served as the editor-in-chief of the Tax Law Review. Schenk’s scholarship has focused on a wide range of issues in tax policy, including behavioral economics, financial instruments, and choice of base. In addition to numerous articles, she has produced three books: Federal Taxation of S Corporations (2015); Federal Income Taxation: Principles, and Policies (with Michael Graetz, 2013); and Ethical Problems in Federal Tax Practice (with Diane Ring and Bernard Wolfman, 2014). Schenk has actively served the New York State Bar Association, where she was on the executive committee of the Tax Section and is a past chairman of the Committee on Professional Ethics. Nationally, she is a past member of the council of the ABA Taxation Section, past vice president of the American Tax Policy Institute, a member of the American Law Institute and the American College of Tax Counsel, and a member of the board of directors of Tax Analysts. Schenk received her JD in 1972 from Columbia University. She has visited at Harvard and Yale law schools.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1963, Leo (“Len”) Schmolka practiced law with Weil, Gotshal & Manges for 17 years, the last 10 as a partner. During that time, he received his LLM in taxation from NYU School of Law. In 1981, with a reputation as one of the nation’s preeminent estate planners, Schmolka joined the NYU Law faculty. He teaches broadly in the curriculum, focusing on corporate and partnership taxation in the past 15 or so years, and his writing has concentrated on the taxation of trusts and partnerships. An active member of the New York State Bar Association, Schmolka chaired two committees of its Tax Section and served as a member of its executive committee for five years. From 1994 to 1995, Schmolka was a consultant to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, offering advice on legislation, rulings, and regulations in trust and estate matters. For 25 years he was the faculty coordinator of the New York University/IRS CPE program, through which he regularly participated in teaching IRS personnel. His most ambitious academic writing to date is a book-length article examining certain abusive aspects of trust income taxation and suggesting reform.

After graduating from Princeton University and Yale Law School, Daniel Shaviro spent three years each at Caplin & Drysdale, a leading tax specialty firm, and the Joint Committee on Taxation, where he worked extensively on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Shaviro began his teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School in 1987 and joined the NYU School of Law in 1995. His scholarly work examines tax policy, budget policy, and entitlements issues. His list of published books includes Fixing U.S. International Taxation (2014); Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (2009); Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government’s March Toward Bankruptcy (2007); Who Should Pay for Medicare? (2004); Making Sense of Social Security Reform (2000); When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity (2000); and Do Deficits Matter? (1997). Shaviro also has published a novel, Getting It (2010), and has a blog at danshaviro.blogspot.com. At NYU Law, Shaviro teaches various tax courses, including a scholarly colloquium on tax policy and public finance.

John P. Steines Jr. received a degree in engineering from General Motors Institute and worked for General Motors Corporation before receiving a JD from Ohio State University College of Law in 1974 (summa cum laude, Order of the Coif). He practiced law for three years in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then, as a Gerald L. Wallace Scholar, received an LLM in taxation from New York University in 1978. He became an instructor at NYU School of Law and two years later joined the permanent faculty. Steines’s teaching includes classes in basic personal and corporate income tax for JD students and a wide variety of LLM courses in corporate and partnership taxation, consolidated tax returns, tax accounting, international aspects of US taxation, and tax policy. Formerly counsel for many years to Weil, Gotshal & Manges and, since 2004, to Cooley, Steines’s practice focuses on corporate, partnership, and international tax matters. He frequently testifies as an expert in US and foreign tax or tax-related controversies. A former editor-in-chief of the Tax Law Review, his scholarship includes a casebook titled International Aspects of US Income Taxation, lead authorship of the Bittker & Eustice treatise on corporate taxation from 2011 to 2013, and several articles on corporate, partnership, and international issues.