Brooklyn Law School Library’s New Books List for June 1, 2018 is now out with 38 print titles and 41 E-book titles. One book attracted the attention of this writer. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue tells the story of an astonishing modern media conspiracy. In an age when people compete to be contrarian, it is rare to encounter an astounding proposition. That is what makes Ryan Holiday’s “Conspiracy” such a delight. It takes real nerve, during an investigation into possible collusion to swing the 2016 presidential election, to argue that we might be better off “if more people took up plotting.” Unfortunately for Holiday, and for readers who enjoy a good provocation, his book focuses on a case that demonstrates why transparency beats conspiracy in the long run.

“Conspiracy” chronicles the legal battle between Terry Bollea, or Hulk Hogan, and Gawker Media, the swashbuckling Manhattan publishing group founded by Nick Denton. In 2012, A.J. Daulerio, then editor of the company’s flagship site, published excerpts of a sex tape, recorded in 2006 without Bollea’s consent or knowledge, that showed Bollea in bed with Heather Clem, who was then married to Bollea’s best friend: the radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. The story was wacky, but it got truly weird. In 2007, Gawker Media acquired a powerful enemy when one of its writers outed PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel as gay. Gawker’s Denton, who like Thiel is gay, believed that Thiel’s refusal to be open about being gay was proof that Thiel was “paranoid.” To Thiel, the story was a violation, one that made him into an object of curiosity, in a way he found incomprehensible.

Thiel, as Holiday writes, “venerated privacy, in creating space for weirdos and the politically incorrect to do what they do. Because he believed that’s where progress came from.” What Gawker saw as transparency, Thiel saw as a threat to Silicon Valley. He was so angry at Gawker that he began to refer to it as “the Manhattan Based Terrorist Organization.”

But it took him four years to strike back. In 2011, a Mr. A, whose role is first described in “Conspiracy” but who remains a shadowy figure throughout the book, persuaded Thiel to devote $10 million and five years to a shell company aimed at finding and backing potential lawsuits against Gawker. Among their beneficiaries: Terry Bollea. In 2016, a Florida jury awarded Bollea damages so punishing that Denton had to sell the company. On the surface, it seemed that Thiel’s conspiracy had checkmated Gawker Media.

Holiday, an author and corporate adviser, had unusual access to Thiel and Denton. It is one of the many ironies of this story, and of “Conspiracy,” that talking makes Thiel more sympathetic and comprehensible than plotting ever did. But by the end of the book, it’s clear that, despite Holiday’s argument, Thiel’s conspiracy failed: Thiel killed Gawker, but in doing so undermined his dream of making the Internet a more decent place and securing a more private life for himself. By contrast, Gawker was destroyed not because its leaders failed to conspire, but because they did not pursue the transparency they claimed to believe in.

By the time Thiel did identify himself as Gawker Media’s nemesis after the verdict in Bollea v. Gawker, the narrative of the trial was well on its way to being set. Thiel discovered that it is difficult to come forward and insist that you are the hero of the story when you have already won the sort of surprising and dismaying victory that makes the public inclined to believe that you are the villain. “Cunning and resources might win the war,” Holiday writes toward the end of “Conspiracy,” “but it’s the stories and myths afterwards that will determine who deserved to win it.” The flaw in Thiel’s thinking, and in “Conspiracy,” is in failing to recognize that the stories and the myths that emerge after an event often are the substance of the victory.

The Brooklyn Law School Library New Books List for May 1, 2018 has 23 print titles and 54 E-book titles. There are so many topics covered in the list but the pending case of Gaylor v. Mnuchin which involves permitting housing allowances given by denominations to clergy to be exempt from taxation makes one book on the list highly topical.

The book is Taxing the Church: Religion, Exemptions, Entanglement, and the Constitution by Edward A. Zelinsky, Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law. It explores the taxation and exemption of churches and other religious institutions. This exploration reveals that churches and other religious institutions are treated diversely by the federal and state tax systems. Sectarian institutions pay more tax than many believe. In important respects, the states differ among themselves in their respective approaches to the taxation of sectarian entities. Either taxing or exempting churches and other sectarian entities entangles church and state. The taxes to which churches are more frequently subject – federal Social Security and Medicare taxes, sales taxes, real estate conveyance taxes – fall on the less entangling end of the spectrum. The taxes from which religious institutions are exempt – general income taxes, value-based property taxes, unemployment taxes – are typically taxes with the greatest potential for church-state enforcement entanglement. It is unpersuasive to reflexively denounce the tax exemption of religious actors and institutions as a subsidy.

For many years, religious denominations in the United States have been largely exempt from paying taxes. However, some cracks are beginning to show in that armor. Principal among them is a suit awaiting a hearing by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Gaylor v. Mnuchin, in which the Freedom From Religion Foundation is challenging the constitutionality of a 1954 law, the so-called “parsonage allowance” under 26 U.S.C. § 107(2) that permits “ministers of the gospel” to receive cash housing allowances tax free, a potential violation of the Establishment Clause. The case is on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals For The Seventh Circuit seeking to reverse the district court’s opinion and affirm the constitutionality of the minister’s housing allowance under 26 U.S.C. § 107(2).

The Brooklyn Law School Library New Books List for March 1, 2018 is out with 40 print titles and 17 e-book titles. One of the titles is the 151-page volume Being Watched: Legal Challenges to Government Surveillance by Jeffrey L. Vagle, Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The nine chapters (You Are Being Watched; A History of Government Surveillance; Getting through the Courthouse Door; The Doctrine of Article III Standing; Before the Supreme Court; Government Surveillance and the Law; The Legacy of Laird v. Tatum; Technology, National Security, and Surveillance; and The Future of Citizen Challenges to Government Surveillance) tell a riveting history of the Supreme Court decision that set the legal precedent for citizen challenges to government surveillance, particularly the case of Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1 (1972). There the Supreme Court considered the question of who could sue the government over a surveillance program, holding in a 5-4 decision that chilling effects arising “merely from the individual’s knowledge” of likely government surveillance did not constitute adequate injury to meet Article III standing requirements. The book also discusses a more recent case where the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act over surveillance of American citizens and residents. That Supreme Court case, Clapper v. Amnesty International USA (2013), was one where the Court held that the District Court for the Southern District of New York was correct ruling that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring their case before any federal court.

The book is a fascinating and disturbing story of jurisprudence related to the issue of standing in citizen challenges to government surveillance in the United States. It examines the facts of surveillance cases and the reasoning of the courts who heard them, and considers whether the obstacle of standing to surveillance challenges in U.S. courts can ever be overcome. The author examines the history of military domestic surveillance, tensions between the three branches of government, the powers of the presidency in times of war, and the power of individual citizens in the ongoing quest for the elusive freedom-organization balance. It is essential reading for every American citizen. It explains all the legalities and the methods government uses to surveil citizens.

The Brooklyn Law School Library New Books List for December 1, 2017 has 49 print titles and 28 e-book titles. Subjects range from criminal justice and judicial error; same-sex marriage; writing skills of US Presidents; history of New York, NY; impeachment of US Presidents; prisons and privatization; and mourning customs, to name a few. Cheating: Ethics and Law in Everyday Life by Stanford Law School Professor Deborah L. Rhode, is one e-book worth reading as it deals with law and ethics and cheating. Cheating, a phenomenon so entrenched in everyday American life, costs close to a trillion dollars annually. Why it remains a serious problem is that it is often excused by the statement that “Everyone does it”. The more that individuals believe that cheating is widespread, the easier it is to justify. If Americans are cheating more, they appear to be worrying about it less. Rhode, rejects the “everybody does it” rationale and sees the ubiquity in deceit as uncomfortably close to a universal human truth. She offers the only recent comprehensive account of cheating in everyday life and the strategies necessary to address it. Because cheating is highly situational, Rhode drills down on its most common forms in sports, organizations, taxes, academia, copyright infringement, marriage, and insurance and mortgages.

The book reviews needed strategies to address the pervasiveness of cheating. Efforts need to begin early, with education by parents, teachers, and other role models who can display and reinforce moral behaviors. Organizations need to create ethical cultures, in which informal norms, formal policies, and reward structures all promote integrity. People need more moral triggers to remind them of their own values. Also important are more effective enforcement structures, including additional resources and stiffer sanctions. Rhode, the founding president of the International Association of Legal Ethics, former president of the Association of American Law Schools, and former founding director of Stanford’s Center on Ethics, notes that cheating has evolved with time. Technology has transformed some forms of cheating with filesharing, downloading of music on the internet, or plagiarism, lifting stuff off the internet, whole sites on the internet that enable people to just cut and paste their term papers and have somebody else even write their paper on plagiarism. She states in an interview with Tavis Smiley that over half of taxpayers admit to cheating sometimes on their forms. 80% of high school students will admit that they’ve cheated in class. The pervasiveness and the persistence of it is what should give us pause because there’s a price tag to it.

Brooklyn Law School Library’s New Books List for October contains 10 print titles and 20 eBook titles. Among the print items are two on taxation both authored by BLS Professors. The first is Federal Taxation of Corporations and Corporate Transactions (KF6464.D43 2017) by Steven Dean and Bradley T. Borden. This first edition of Federal Taxation of Corporations and Corporate Transactions provides a comprehensive examination of tax principles with a unique practice-oriented approach to help students become practice ready with skills that they have developed in a setting that reflects practice in the real world. The casebook introduces students not only to transactional tax practice and the federal tax penalty regime, but also to the rules of professional ethics and the specific rules that govern professionals who practice tax law. It features an array of Deal Downloads that breathe life into complex material, presenting high-profile transactions involving Amazon, Apple, Ford and others.

The second title is Taxation and Business Planning for Partnerships and LLCs: 2017-2018: Client File: DD Pizza LLC (operating partnership) by Bradley T. Borden (Call Number KF6452.B673 2017). The materials in this Client File provide real-word problems, documents, and financials that direct the study of partnership taxation. They are an ideal accompaniment to partnership tax casebooks, especially the author’s own Taxation and Business Planning for Partnerships and LLCs. This first edition of the Client File includes memoranda and practice materials. It also includes recent developments that will not be in most casebooks. The Client File creates a practice setting that is ideal for studying issues that transactional tax attorneys’ clients face regularly.

The book is uniquely designed to help students become practice-ready with skills that they have developed in a setting that reflects actual practice. This new partnership tax casebook has several key features, including an accompanying client file created to help students learn the law in a practice-like setting. This comprehensive treatise-like casebook includes background information on non-tax topics, such as basic accounting and finance, concepts related to debt, and state-law entity transactions, as well as a general review of basic tax concepts that come up through the course of studying partnership taxation. The first edition of Taxation and Business Planning for Partnerships and LLCs also includes rules of conduct for attorneys and practice before the IRS.