Committee Opinions and Treasury Regulation: Tax Lawyer Ethics, 1965–1985

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, tax lawyers are subject to complex and technical professional regulation. While the incremental changes in this regulation often prompt considerable debate at the time the change emerges, the intellectual history of those debates and changes has only recently begun to be written. In a prior article, I explored these developments in the period 1945-1965, documenting a tax professionalism that tended to be patriotic, philosophical, and pragmatic. In this Article, I turn to the subsequent 20 years, documenting the domination of the professional debates by committees and the ascent of a significantly more constrained and technically oriented professionalism.