I am a retired professor. I graduated from the University of California at Irvine in 1976, and after a year of graduate study in mathematical physics I attended Harvard Law School. Following law school, I clerked for Chief Judge Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., of the United States Tax Court.
I was the William K. Jacobs Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, a position I held from the fall of 2017 until my retirement on June 30, 2025. I was Warren Distinguished Professor and Director of Tax Programs at the University of San Diego School of Law from 2014 through 2017, I taught at Emory Law School from 1983 until 2014, I was the William K. Jacobs Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in 2013-14, and I was the Maurice R. Greenberg Visiting Professor at Yale Law School in 2009. I also taught as a visiting professor at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) and Cornell Law Schools and at the International Tax Center at Leiden in the Netherlands and at the Technical University in Dresden, Germany.
I practiced in Los Angeles with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and in Washington, DC, with Steptoe & Johnson as well as with the National Office of Deloitte Tax.
I am the author or co-author of six books: Partnership Options; Disregarded Entities; Federal Income Taxation of Corporations and Partnerships; Federal Corporate Taxation; Essentials of U.S. Taxation; and Federal Income Taxation of Partnerships and Other Pass-Thru Entities. My articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Tax Law Review, the Virginia Tax Law Review, Tax Notes, and other periodicals. I have on four occasions been recognized for excellence in teaching and was a member of the Bloomberg/BNA Tax Management Real Estate Advisory Board as well as an Editorial Advisor to the Tax Advisor magazine.