PUBLISHED:July 27, 2017

Zelenak elected to American Law Institute

Lawrence A. Zelenak, the Pamela B. Gann Professor of Law

Lawrence A. Zelenak, the Pamela B. Gann Professor of Law, has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute (ALI).

ALI members are distinguished lawyers, judges, and legal academics who produce scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law through publication of the highly influential Restatements of the Law, model statutes, and principles of law. Zelenak, a scholar of tax law and policy, is one of 58 individuals whose election to membership was announced by ALI on July 26.

At Duke, Zelenak teaches income tax, corporate tax, and a tax policy seminar. His publications include numerous articles on tax policy issues and a treatise on federal income taxation of individuals.

Zelenak’s recent articles include “The Body in Question: The Income Tax and Human Body Materials,” 80 Law & Contemporary Problems 37-82 (No. 1 2017); “For Better and Worse: The Differing Income Tax Treatments of Marriage at Different Income Levels,” 93 North Carolina Law Review 783-820 (2015); “The Almost-Restatement of Income Tax of 1954: When Tax Giants Roamed the Earth,” 79 Brooklyn Law Review 709-732 (2014); and “Up in the Air Over Taxing Frequent Flyer Benefits: The American, Canadian, and Australian Experiences,” 9 Capital Markets Law Journal 420-446 (2014). His most recent book is Learning to Love Form 1040: Two Cheers for the Return-Based Mass Income Tax (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Prior to joining Duke Law in 2003, Zelenak was a member of the Columbia Law School faculty. Earlier he was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Law; professor in residence at the Office of the Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service, Washington, D.C.; an assistant professor at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon; and an associate with the firm of LeSourd and Patten in Seattle. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Utah and Northwestern University schools of law. He is a graduate of the University of Santa Clara and Harvard Law School.

Twenty-seven Duke Law faculty scholars and more than 50 alumni are members of ALI. Dean David F. Levi became president of the organization in May.