‘Revisiting the Law of Charitable Transfers’

Eric Kades, ‘The Charitable Continuum’, 22 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 285 (2021). As Justice Holmes observed, lawmaking consists in drawing lines. But how many lines do we need? Regarding charitable transfers, more than we have – so contends Professor Eric Kades, in a recent article. Kades begins by observing a fundamental point that we often take for granted: as a legal category, charitability is monolithic. A transfer either is or is not charitable. Hence, an income tax deduction is either available or unavailable, depending on whether the tax commissioner acknowledges an entity or purpose as charitable. Although the exact range of purposes accepted as charitable varies among American states, and is defined independently under federal law for tax purposes, the binary nature of the classification is universal … (more)

[Adam Hirsch, JOTWELL, 10 June 2024]

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