Book Chapters

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  The Story of LLCs: Combining the Best Features of a Flawed Business Tax Structure

  Steven A. Bank, Kirk J. Stark, and Susan P. Hamill

  This book does not deal solely with judicial opinions. In the field of business taxation, many of the most significant developments are not cases, and certainly not Supreme Court cases, but rather legislative and administrative changes and transactional innovations. Business Tax Stories includes chapters on several landmark cases; however, it also surveys many of the critical developments in the history of U.S. corporate and partnership taxation. Taken as a whole, this title is organized to serve as a history of business taxation over the last century.

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  Civil Disobedience

  Kermit L. Hall, David S. Clark, James W. Ely, Joel B. Grossman, N. E. H. Hull, and Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

  A landmark in legal publishing, The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court is a now classic text many of whose entries are regularly cited by scholars as the definitive statement on any particular subject. In the tradition of that work, editor in chief Kermit L. Hall offers up The Oxford Companion to American Law, a one-volume, A-Z encyclopedia that covers topics ranging from aging and the law, wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, the Salem Witch Trials and Plessy vs. Ferguson.
  The Companion takes as its starting point the insight that law is embedded in society, and that to understand American law one must necessarily ask questions about the relationship between it and the social order, now and in the past. The volume assumes that American law, in all its richness and complexity, cannot be understood in isolation, as simply the business of the Supreme Court, or as a list of common law doctrines. Hence, the volume takes seriously issues involving laws role in structuring decisions about governance, the significance of state and local law and legal institutions, and the place of American law in a comparative international perspective. Nearly 500 entries are included, written by over 300 expert contributors.

  
  Intended for the working lawyer or judge, the high school student working on a term paper, or the general adult reader interested in the topic, the Companion is the authoritative reference work on the subject of American law.

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  Scholastic Aptitude Test Scores, Race, and Academic Performance in Selective Colleges and Universities

  Christopher Jencks, Meredith Phillips, Fredrick E. Vars, and William G. Bowen

  The test score gap between blacks and whites—on vocabulary, reading, and math tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence--is large enough to have far-reaching social and economic consequences. In their introduction to this book, Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips argue that eliminating the disparity would dramatically reduce economic and educational inequality between blacks and whites. Indeed, they think that closing the gap would do more to promote racial equality than any other strategy now under serious discussion. The book offers a comprehensive look at the factors that contribute to the test score gap and discusses options for substantially reducing it.

  Although significant attempts have been made over the past three decades to shrink the test score gap, including increased funding for predominantly black schools, desegregation of southern schools, and programs to alleviate poverty, the median black American still scores below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized tests. The book brings together recent evidence on some of the most controversial and puzzling aspects of the test score debate, including the role of test bias, heredity, and family background. It also looks at how and why the gap has changed over the past generation, reviews the educational, psychological, and cultural explanations for the gap, and analyzes its educational and economic consequences.

  The authors demonstrate that traditional explanations account for only a small part of the black-white test score gap. They argue that this is partly because traditional explanations have put too much emphasis on racial disparities in economic resources, both in homes and in schools, and on demographic factors like family structure. They say that successful theories will put more emphasis on psychological and cultural factors, such as the way black and white parents teach their children to deal with things they do not know or understand, and the way black and white children respond to the same classroom experiences. Finally, they call for large-scale experiments to determine the effects of schools' racial mix, class size, ability grouping, and other policies.

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  Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action: Paradox or Paradigm?

  Carol M. Swain and Fredrick E. Vars

  Race versus Class traces the evolution of affirmative action policies and explores the issues surrounding the current debate. In addition to providing fundamental facts, the book presents original insights and recommendations for salvaging the policy. Included among the essays are case studies of race-exclusive scholarships, housing policies, and the Head Start program. The book also includes a discussion of the difficulty of measuring public opinion on affirmative action, and of how existing methods might be improved. Sound public policy recommendations emerge from the book's racially diverse group of contributors.