SPECIAL EDITION DEAN’S ROUNDTABLE

SPECIAL EDITION DEAN’S ROUNDTABLE
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Room 119 from 12:30pm – 1:20pm
Lunch provided

RSVP VIA SIMPLICITY ONLY – limited seating for first 50 students to register!

Please join Dean Testy for a Dean’s Roundtable on Thursday, May 12th at 12:30pm in Room 133, for a rare opportunity to hear from Ms. Eileen O’Connor, who served within the U.S. Department of Justice for six years as Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division and who is the wife of our inaugural Shefelman Jurist-in-Residence, the Honorable A. Raymond Randolph. During the roundtable, Ms. O’Connor will give a talk titled “The Use and Abuse of the Internal Revenue Code” and will answer questions from the audience.

The following provides an abstract of the talk she will give at the roundtable: The purpose of the Internal Revenue Code is to raise revenue. But lawmakers also use the tax laws to reward and punish economic and social behavior, to curry favor with interest groups, and to persuade their supporters they are doing something to address their concerns. A survey of recent tax legislative proposals will illustrate these points. And a quick review of recent tax law changes will demonstrate the disastrous consequences that, while unintended, were certainly not unforeseeable.


Ms. O’Connor is a partner in the Washington, DC office of Pillsbury, and leader of the firm’s federal tax controversy and tax policy team. Ms. O’Connor joined the firm in July 2007 from the United States Department of Justice, after six years as Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division, a position to which President George W. Bush appointed her, and the Senate confirmed her, in 2001. From its inception in July 2002 until she left the Department, Ms. O’Connor was a member of the President’s Corporate Fraud Task Force.

As head of the Tax Division, Ms. O’Connor oversaw the litigation—civil and criminal, trial and appellate—of its approximately 350 attorneys. Significant litigation during this time included, among other things, hotly-contested and high-profile trials concerning the promotion and use of corporate and individual tax shelters. In addition to supervising the Tax Division’s litigation, Ms. O’Connor personally represented the United States in oral argument before the United States Supreme Court and the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Federal Circuits. To stem the rising tide of tax fraud, while preserving the possibility of the defendants' eventual indictment and conviction, in 2001, Ms. O'Connor created and implemented a program to coordinate civil and criminal investigative and judicial proceedings. The program continues to this day, and, under her leadership, resulted in the Tax Division’s obtaining more than 240 injunctions from United States District Courts across the country.

At the conclusion of her service with the Department of Justice, the Attorney General awarded Ms. O’Connor the Edmund J. Randolph Award for Outstanding Service, the Department’s highest award. The award is named for the first Attorney General and recognizes outstanding contributions to the accomplishment of the Department’s mission. The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and the IRS Chief Counsel also bestowed their highest awards to Ms. O’Connor at the conclusion of her service in recognition of her contributions to the federal tax system.

Early in her career, Ms. O’Connor was a corporate tax law specialist with the National Office of the Internal Revenue Service. And for more than 20 years, Ms. O’Connor, who is also a CPA, was a national tax consultant with several top national accounting firms. She has taught in the graduate tax law program of Georgetown University School of Law, and was Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Tax Policy at the George Mason University School of Law.

Ms. O’Connor has long been a frequent speaker at bar conferences and business seminars. She recently designed and organized a one-day tax policy conference titled “Our Nation’s Founding Principles and Our Tax Code – Consistent or In Conflict?” sponsored by The Federalist Society.