Michael Livingston is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of taxation, comparative law, and legal history. At Rutgers, Professor Livingston teaches courses on Federal Income Taxation, Business Planning, Comparative Law, Law and the Holocaust, and Statutory Interpretation and Legislation, and serves as faculty advisor for the law school’s VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) and tax-exempt organization programs. In addition to Rutgers, he has taught at Cornell, Temple, and various foreign law schools, and served as a member of the comparative law commission of the Abilitazione Nazionale Scientifica (ASN), the Italian Government agency charged with the evaluation of new and continuing law professors.
Professor Livingston’s scholarship emphasizes comparative tax law and Law and the Holocaust, including the failure of law to prevent the Holocaust and its limited success in providing reparation to its victims. His book, “The Fascists and the Jews of Italy: Mussolini’s Race Laws, 1938-1943,” is the definitive English-language study of the Italian antisemitic laws. He has also supervised a comprehensive update of Cappelletti Merryman and Perillo’s treatise “The Italian Legal System;” written a highly regarded income tax casebook; and published articles in numerous journals, including the Yale, Texas, Cornell, Northwestern, and NYU Tax Law Reviews and the American Journal of Comparative Law. Professor Livingston is currently at work on two books, one on Tax and Culture and the second on Holocaust Law and Memory in the United States, Europe, and Israel.
Before arriving at Rutgers, Professor Livingston worked at Proskauer and Rose in New York City and the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress. In addition to his scholarly activities he writes fiction (primarily poetry and short stories) and served as an (unsuccessful) candidate for public office. He lives in Cheltenham with his wife, Anne Weiss, and has two adult children.