John Brooks

John Brooks’s research focuses on tax law, public finance, social insurance, and related issues in federal fiscal and budget policy, as well as tax history and the constitutional law of taxation. In addition to contributing to tax and fiscal theory generally, Brooks also focuses on “tax-adjacent” areas of fiscal policy, especially the federal student loan program, and his work seeks to better understand the array of government fiscal tools beyond classic taxing and spending.

His work has appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal, the Washington University Law Review, the Tax Law Review, the Florida Tax Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Journal of Legal Education, and elsewhere, and he has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, Politico, and the American Prospect. He is currently working on a book on American "hidden" social welfare spending, under contract with Yale University Press. He consults regularly on both tax and student loan topics with legislators, lawyers, and advocates.

Prior to joining Fordham in 2022, Professor Brooks spent 10 years on the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center. Before that, he was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, an Associate in the tax department of Ropes & Gray in Boston, and a clerk for Judge Norhan H. Stahl of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Education

Professor Brooks earned an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was an Olin Fellow in Law & Economics and was awarded the Sidney I. Roberts prize for the best paper on taxation.

Representative Publications

Moore Questions, Some Answers: Fixing the Personal Tax System Despite Constitutional Constraints, 28 Fla. Tax Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2025) (with David Gamage and Edward J. McCaffery)

The Original Meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment, 102 Wash. U. L. Rev 1 (2024) (with David Gamage)

The (Non)Taxation of Student Debt Cancellation: Statutory Misinterpretation and Normative Conflict, 77 Nat'l Tax J. 623 (2024)

Taxation and the Constitution, Reconsidered, 76 Tax L. Rev. 75 (2022) (with David Gamage)

Tax Now or Tax Never: Political Optionality and the Case for Current-Assessment Tax Reform, 100 N.C. L. Rev. 482 (2021) (with David Gamage)

The Tax Treatment of Student Loan Discharge and Cancellation, Student Borrower Protection Center Report (Nov. 2020)

Redesigning Education Finance: How Student Loans Outgrew the “Debt” Paradigm, 109 Geo. L.J 5 (2020) (with Adam Levitin)

Why a Wealth Tax is Definitely Constitutional, SSRN Working Paper (Jan. 9, 2020) (with David Gamage)

Curing the Cost Disease: Legal Education, Legal Services, and the Role of Income-Contingent Loans, 68 J. Legal Educ. 521 (2019) (solicited)

The Definitions of Income, 71 Tax L. Rev. 253 (2018)

The Case for More Debt: Expanding College Affordability by Expanding Income-Driven Repayment, 2018 Utah L. Rev. 847 (2018) (solicited)

Cross-Subsidies: Government’s Hidden Pocketbook , 106 Geo L.J. 1229 (2018)(with Brian Galle and Brendan Maher)

Quasi-Public Spending, 104 Geo. L.J. 1057 (2016)

The Missing Tax Benefit of Donor-Advised Funds, 150 Tax Notes 1013 (Feb. 29, 2016)

Income-Driven Repayment and the Public Financing of Higher Education, 104 Geo. L.J. 229 (2016)

Fiscal Federalism as Risk-Sharing: The Insurance Role of Redistributive Taxation, 68 Tax L. Rev. 201 (2014)

Taxation, Risk, and Portfolio Choice: The Treatment of Returns to Risk Under a Normative Income Tax, 66 Tax L. Rev. 255 (2013)

Doing Too Much: The Standard Deduction and the Conflict Between Progressivity and Simplification, 2 Colum. J. Tax. L. 203 (2011)