Read the full article on SSRN.

Kaplan is also scheduled to present The Fundamental Fragility of Tax Reform: Lessons for Legislators After Forty Years at the Conference on Legal Perspectives on the Development and Enactment of Tax Policy, University of Cambridge (U.K.) Centre for Tax Law, on July 8, 2025. This paper examines the development of major tax reform in the United States by focusing on the monumental Tax Reform Act of 1986, addressing the economic, legal, and political forces that led to its enactment. It then analyzes what has happened to that law’s achievements since that time.

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According to the authors, “Settlementality” breaks new ground by exploring how everyday people perceive the role of settlements in the legal system. Their novel empirical study provides the first systematic investigation into lay opinions of settlement. They surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 1,000 U.S. adults to ask them what they think about settlement. Respondents told them, for example, the extent they agreed or disagreed with statements like these: “A settlement between two parties is nobody’s business but their own.” “Settling parties are more interested in money than justice.” “Settlementality” promises to be a foundational article in an emerging body of empirical scholarship about settlement, reporting for the first-time what respondents thought settlement should look like.

The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies is a peer-edited, peer-refereed, interdisciplinary journal that publishes high-quality, empirically-oriented articles of interest to scholars in a diverse range of law and law-related fields, including civil justice, corporate law, criminal justice, domestic relations, economic, finance, health care, political science, psychology, public policy, securities regulation, and sociology. 

Read his full interview with the Illinois News Bureau.

Read Lawless’s original blog post and follow-up post.

Read Bloomberg’s coverage of the issue.

Livingston was nominated for the award by Professors Ralph Brubaker and Robert Lawless, internationally renowned scholars in the field of bankruptcy. In their letter recommending Livingston, the professors were effusive in their praise for him, highlighting the way his enthusiasm for bankruptcy matches their own. Specifically, Brubaker and Lawless noted he is “someone who obviously appreciates all of the nuance and complexity of bankruptcy law and practice, asking very thoughtful and sophisticated questions.”

Bankruptcy is a topic that Livingston learned about early in life, having personally witnessed the process through the failure of his father’s business when he was just 10 years old. The fresh start his father was afforded via bankruptcy allowed him to find a new career, which he has successfully practiced for 35 years; bankruptcy as a “catalyst for positive life changes,” as Livingston explained, helped fuel his eagerness to work in the field. He also cited his experience in the College of Law’s bankruptcy courses as a spark for the “intellectual passion for the subject that has shaped my academic career.”

Last summer, Livingston completed an internship with the U.S. Trustee’s office in Chicago and is planning on a career in bankruptcy law. He is seeking a clerkship position with a bankruptcy judge after graduation and ultimately wants to work in a business bankruptcy practice. “He is immensely practical and has a broad and sophisticated skill set that equips him to be a fantastically successful bankruptcy attorney (which we fully expect him to be),” Brubaker and Lawless wrote in their letter recommending him.

As recipient of the Distinguished Bankruptcy Law Student award, Livingston will be honored at a special reception on Thursday, March 20, in Washington D.C. In addition, the American College of Bankruptcy will provide him an all-expense paid trip to attend the College Induction Ceremony and Annual Meeting.

Read more from CBS News.

Read the full article online.