B
The following is from Newsbytes for 7/7/03
The IRS today selected Beverly Ortega Babers to be its chief human capital officer, a new position under John Dalrymple, deputy commissioner for operations support.
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 required that executive departments and agencies appoint a chief human capital officer.The chief human capital officer serves as an integral part of senior leadership, an IRS spokesman said.
The CHCO advises the IRS commissioner on work force development policy and ways to find the most productive employees for the right job in their agency based on merit system principles, the spokesman said.
Babers, who joined the IRS in 1999, is now the director of technical services in the IRS Appeal Division, overseeing tax policy and procedure, technical guidance and processing services functions within the division.
Before coming to the IRS, Babers was chief of staff and counsel to the Justice Departments assistant attorney general of the tax division, where she made recommendations for appellate and litigation strategy and oversaw administrative functions.
Babers is a 1989 graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley.
The Washington Post reported on 12/13/99 that Mr. Bailey died on 12/10/99. The obituary reported that Mr. Bailey served in DOJ for over 40 years, before retiring in 1974 as chief of the criminal section. The obtiuary indicated that survivors include his wife, Mary A. Raphel of Rockville and a sister.
You may read or download a booklet that was lovingly made by Bea and Friends of Mike. The file is in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format and can be read with the Adobe Acrobat Reader that is free from Adobe and which you may already have on your computer because it is both free and ubiquitous and often contained as a plug in to internet browsers. If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat reader, please e-mail me at jack@tjtaxlaw and I will e-mail you instructions on how you can download it from your internet browser. If you have the Adobe Acrobat reader as a browser plug-in, you can read the file by clicking on the name of the file -- Remembering Mike Baum. You can download the file by using the download feature of your browser. In MS's Internet Explorer, the download feature is invoked by right clicking on the name of the document -- Remembering Mike Baum -- and choosing save as.
For those who prefer to read the test in HTML format, you may do so by clicking here. And you can read more tributes below.
John Murray advised that our friend, colleague, mentor, and general supporter, Mike Baum, died on 6/19/.2000 after a major bout with cancer.
The obituary from the Washington Post follows:
Myron C. Baum, 82, who retired from the Justice Department in 1979 as deputy assistant attorney general of the tax division and spent the past 21 years of counsel to Caplin & Drysdale law firm in Washington, died of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma June 19 at Suburban Hospital. He lived in Kensington.
A New York native, Mr. Baum was a 1936 graduate of City College of New York, a 1940 graduate of New York University law school and a member of the law review's editorial board. He was an Army Air Forces veteran of World War II.
He came to the Washington area in 1941 and was a lawyer in the Federal Works Agency, Office of Price Administration and War Manpower Commission before joining Justice in 1944.
He spent 13 years at Justice's Office of Alien Property before entering the tax division and rising from appellate lawyer to trial section chief to deputy for refund litigation to deputy assistant attorney general.
His Justice Department commendations included the Attorney General's Medal and Distinguished Service Award.
In the 1980s and 1990s, he did pro bono work on dispute resolution programs in Washington-area courts and had served on the attorney-client arbitration board of the D.C. Bar.
He was a past board member and president of the Daleview Pool in Silver Spring.
Survivors include his wife of 57 years, Beatrice Sachs Baum of Kensington; two sons, Dr. Andrew, of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Robert, of Ames, Iowa; and two grandchildren.
The death notice from the Washington Post indicated that the family will be in mourning at his late residence Thursday through Sunday and that, in lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy may be made to the Jewish Social Services Agency Home Health, 11B Firstfield Rd., Gaithersburg, MD 20878-1704.
If any alumni desire to contact Bea, please call Jack Townsend (713-521-9977) for the contact information.
As always, if anyone have appropriate comments or anecdotes about Mike that you feel would be appropriate to share among the alumni group, please let me know and I will post them to the web site
We all will miss Mike but can take some comfort in great memories.
Ed Copley's Comments:
Jack, Steve Cochran forwarded to me the sad news about Mike Baum's death.
I was in Mike's tax refund section from 1961-1966, mostly in Washington, then in Dallas. With Murray, Cochran, Hrdlicka, Kendrick, Gary Smith, Norman Golden,Wes Watkins, Jack Clark, Bob Waters, Billy Ravkind, et al
Mike was a great mentor; he taught me how to write a brief; my deficiencies were lessened by his teaching.
What a wonderful man; a great student of the law, with unwavering dedication to doing what is right.
I am so sorry to learn of his death.
Best regards,
Ed Copley
Carr Ferguson's Comments:
Marian and I finally got back within range of my computer the other day, and I've just downloaded and printed out the tributes to Mike you put together. Such a special man certainly produced some special memories. I didn't know his son Robert personally, but, of course, knew him through Mike as "my son the Africanist," to help me distinguish him from Andy, "my son the Psychologist." Robert's tribute rang true, as did John Murray's and the others.
I came to know Mike after he joined the Appellate Section. I was in our old Trial Section, but Lee Jackson let me keep the appeal of a case I'd lost after a bench trial in Pittsburgh. Another Baum, Harry, reviewed my draft of the appellant's brief and introduced me to Mike. My senior - and better in so many ways, he was warmly friendly, funny and quietly helpful. What a good choice he was to lead one of the first geographically divided refund trial sections. That appointment came after I left the Division in the summer of 1959, but the affection and admiration he inspired from his troops was legendary. I lunched with him when he came back to his law school, NYU, to recruit Tax LL. M.'s for the Division, and he always brought stories of the progress of my students there - as well of two of my classmates whom I 'd persuaded to become Tax Division trial lawyers - Cynthia Holcomb and John Piper. Neither was in Mike's section, but he made a point of meeting them, observing their work, and having news of them when he visited with the NYU tax faculty.
What a privilege it was to return to the Division during the Carter Administration and be able to work daily with Mike. He ran the Division, of course, as I suspect he had during the years immediately preceding my "second coming," when Scott Crampton occupied the Corner Office. In fact, for a couple of years, Mike called me "Scott" and "Carr" interchangeably, especially when, with extraordinary perception and a diplomacy polished by years of managing bumbling AAG's, he would save me from yet another goof. Yes, he could be subtle and patiently polite, when he thought it would help get the Division's titular head moving through to the right result. Having an absent-minded professor as his last AAG must have tested sorely these skills, if not his bubbling humor. I remember one day he propped me up to address a Senate appropriations subcommittee on the reasonableness of the huge increase he had maneuvered through Justice and OMB. Only after I'd finished delivering the arguments and responses Mike had drilled into me and had returned to my seat did Mike tell me, with the relish he exhibited in finding a solecism in a brief, that I was wearing the jacket of one suit and the pants of another. We won that increase and most of our other battles to strengthen the Division in those years. He always insisted I had been useful, but we all knew Mike was our leader. Don Lubick, Treasury Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy in those days, once warned me that it would be a supreme conceit to ever consider myself Professor Brown's Boss. That would have been equally true with respect to Mike.
He was a close friend and comrade during those days. We were in each other's offices constantly, debating, arguing, compromising, and, in my case, learning strategy, policy, nuance of presentation from a true master of the game. I knew I would enjoy coming back to the best office I've ever worked in, but I could not have begun to imagine how much joy and professional stimulation Mike would add to those four years. Marian and I feel honored that he and Bea remained dear friends ever since.
Carr
The following is from the New Jersey Law Journal of 4/14/03:
Obituary
David Beck, a tax-law expert who helped found one of New Jersey's largest law firms, died on April 3 at the age of 86.
Beck was for much of his career the premier authority on New Jersey tax matters. His writings on the subject, such as "New Jersey Inheritance and Estate Taxes" and "Collected Studies in Federal Taxation, 1945-1975," have guided tax lawyers for a quarter century.
"He was one of the first lawyers practicing in New Jersey to specialize in the tax field," says Clive Cummis, who along with Beck and three other lawyers launched Newark's Sills, Beck, Cummis, Radin and Tischman in 1971. From that initial foray, says Cummis, "he expanded to becoming, at one point in his practice, the dean of the federal tax bar."
Beck graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1938 and from Harvard Law School in 1941. His immersion in tax law began when he served as an attorney for the Justice Department's Tax Division in 1943-44. He later went into private practice, working at the Newark firm headed by Sidney Gutkin in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1964, he formed a law firm with Herbert Gannet.
Beck served as chairman of the Committee on Federal Taxation for the New Jersey State Bar Association in 1953 and from 1955 to 1960. He also taught at Rutgers Law School-Newark and was on the advisory committee of the Institute on Federal Taxation at New York University from 1964 to 1970.
In 1971, at age 55, he joined his Harvard College roommate, former state attorney general Arthur Sills, in founding the firm now known as Sills Cummis Radin Tischman Epstein & Gross.
Though considerably older than the other partners, Beck "added the element of gray hair, a dimension of wisdom, a wonderful sense of humor that kept everybody laughing when things were tense," cofounder Cummis says.Beck also was a strict grammarian who often required associates to re-do their work when the writing was not up to his standards, recalls Alan Sherman, who collaborated with Beck on journal articles and is now a Sills Cummis partner.
"Whether it was for purposes of giving a client the best advice or producing something that was going to be disseminated by other lawyers for their education, he wanted to give a good product," Sherman says.
Beck became of counsel to the Sills firm in the late 1980s and retired in 1997.
In 2000, he created new law in a legal malpractice suit before the state Supreme Court, Pivnick v. Beck, 165 N.J. 670, where he was the prevailing defendant. There, the Court established a heightened "clear and convincing" burden of proof for legal malpractice claims based on the alleged failure of a testamentary document to comply with the testator's intentions.
Jane's Husband of many years died 9/24/02. The following is the obituary from the Washington Post of 9/25/02:
Alfred Bergner, 59; Tax Lawyer, Volunteer
Alfred P. Bergner, 59, a Washington tax lawyer who was a trustee of the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington, died of a brain tumor Sept. 24 at Georgetown University Hospital. He lived in Bethesda.
Mr. Bergner was a native of New York and a cum laude graduate of Amherst College. He received a law degree from Harvard University and a master's degree in tax law from New York University. He clerked with William Drennen, chief judge of the U.S. Tax Court, before going into practice.
He was a former partner in the Washington law firms of Wenchel, Schulman & Manning; Finkelstein, Thompson & Loughran; and Landfield, Becker & Green.
He was a member of the D.C. and American Bar associations and the Bureau of National Affairs estate planning study group.Mr. Bergner was president of the D.C. chapter of the American Friends of Hebrew University and a member of Washington Hebrew Congregation. He did fundraising for the National Cathedral School and Amherst College.
Survivors include his wife of 34 years, Jane Cohen Bergner of Bethesda; two children, Lauren Jill Bergner of New York and Justin Lawrence Bergner of Arlington; his father, Isidore Bergner of Washington; and a sister.
Publication: Jane has authored the Tax Court section of West’s Federal Forms series, a multi-volume treatise. Jane’s work appears as ch. 189 in volume 8. Her work has received quite good reviews and will be useful for even seasoned Tax Court Litigators. Volume 8 also contains forms for the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Court of Federal Claims, both of which are forums for tax litigation. Volume 8 is available for $60.75 (for paper format) and may be ordered by calling 800-328-9352. This series is designed in standard legal publication format to have periodic pocket parts. The volume was favorably reviewed for the tax bar in Tax Notes Today (96 TNT 137-86). Thanks, Jane!
Update on Publication (Posted 1/15/02): The following is from a review by Brook Voght, a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, of Jane Bergner's substantial revisions to her litigation volumes (volume 8 dealing with litigation in the Court of Federal Claims and volume 9 dealing with the Tax Court) in the West Federal Forms series. The review appears in 2002 TNT 10-31 (1/13/02), but will likely appear also in some other Tax Notes publications. The review is quite favorable, indicating that practitioners in the CFC and Tax Court should find the volumes quite useful. Among the key points made are:
1. The CFC and Tax Court materials contain more than "1,200 pages of discussion, forms, and cross references."
2. The volumes are quite useful to practitioners, regardless of the size of case handled before these courts.
3. The discussions are definitive, covering the rules of practice and procedure, as well as strategies in handling procedural and related issues.
4. The book contains a helpful discussion of Tax Court jurisdiction which has become multifaceted as the Court has grown over the years from just a deficiency redetermination forum.
5. The cost is quite reasonable. The entire West Forms series may be purchased for $967.50 and the series and a CD-ROM is avaiable for $468. Since most tax litigators will not require the whole series, each of the two relevant volumes (volumes 8 and 9) may be purchased for $77 each.
In short, Jane has produced excellent works that tax litigators should consider. Our congratulations to Jane.
Jane's Tribute to Gene Silverman - see link.
Jane Bergner Named Among America's Most Influential Women
By email dated 5/2/06, Jane advised as follows:
Dear Friends,
Please forgive the apparent formality of this email, but with some pride, I want to share with you the good news that I was selected by the Forbes Radio Network -- which broadcasts on all American Airlines flights -- for inclusion in its interviews of America's Most Influential Women (along with such women as Madeline Albright, the former U.S. Secretary of State). The interview will be broadcast throughout the month of May, 2006 on all American Airlines flights. It commenced yesterday, May 1, 2006.
In addition, I understand that Newsweek Magazine has selected the interview to be included among a select group of 15 interviews on its new Newsweek radio channel, commencing in September, 2006, on all US Airways and America West flights. The interview will be broadcast on the Newsweek radio channel in both September and October, 2006.
You do not have to travel by air, however, to hear the interview. For the next year, you can access the audio interview "on line" by clicking the following link and then going to my photo and clicking on the link under the photo:
http://www.skyradionetwork.com/women.cfm
The "on-line" access also enables listeners to view my web site under my photo.
I hope that you will enjoy the interview!
The following is from the Washington Post of 5/17/03:
Arthur L. Biggins Justice Department Tax Lawyer
Arthur Leo Biggins, 82, a Justice Department tax lawyer who retired in 1980 as chief of senior litigation counsel, died April 27 at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital. He had a heart ailment and urosepsis.
Mr. Biggins joined Justice in 1953. He became a supervisory trial lawyer in 1962 and about that time became an all-around trouble-shooter on tax law.
His honors include the attorney general's Distinguished Service Award, the Sustained Superior Service Award and the John Marshall Award for trial litigation.
He was a native of Pocatello, Idaho, and a graduate of the University of Michigan. In 1953, he received a master's degree in business administration from Michigan and graduated from its law school.
He served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
He lived in Alexandria. He was a member of the American Rhododendron Society and was a plant consultant at Sherwood Regional Library in Alexandria.
His avocations included the opera, watching ballet and playing chess and bridge.
His wife, Mary Peiffer Biggins, whom he married in 1942, died in 2002.
Survivors include five children, Gail Michelle Gedeon of St. Augustine, Fla., Marie Latrelle Stephens of Hilton Head Island, S.C., Mary Margot Biggins of Chapel Hill, N.C., and Ann Daunelle Eden and James Matthew Biggins, both of Alexandria; four grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.
Carr Ferguson on Biggins
He was one of the best civil trial lawyers the Division ever had. In our Biggins Institute, he taught "witness control" in cross examination. What he really meant was letting a taxpayer's witness know you were fully prepared. He relished litgation and, as Chaucer said of his lawyer, "he would gladly teach." All of us who were his juniors in the '50's, such as John Murray and I, richly benefited from his guidance and enthusiasm. As we said to him many times through the years, "Thank you, Art!"
Chuck Ruffner on Biggins
Art also had a great collection of toy soldiers and created mock battlefields to relive some of the great battles of history.
George Hrdlicka on Biggins
I worked with Art Biggins on several pieces of litigation. He
was a bright guy who always came up with something new. Some of his theories
were pretty far out but he seemed to make them work.Leonard Togman on Biggins
Art was a terrific guy and he was always a help to us when we were young inexperienced attorneys. He will be missed.
Jane Bergner on Biggins
Time went by so quickly that I was unable to talk with you at the meeting. I tried my first case, Heaven Hill, against White & Case with Art "assisting" me in the then Court of Claims before Trial Commissioner Murray Bernhardt. It was really a "trial" for me, as I permitted Art to help notwithstanding Phil Miller's warning that it was not a good idea (Phil later told me "I told you so"). The case was an inventory accounting case involving the warehouse-aging costs of bourbon whiskey (I became quite adept at Bourbon cases and subsequently tried the Brown Forman investment tax credit case involving what were then termed by the taxpayer whiskey maturation facilities, rather than warehouses, in spite of the fact that I was forced to drink bourbon while in Louisville and I am violently allergic to Bourbon). Art, who had an accounting background and who had "lost" a prior district court case involving the same issue, tried this case as if it were a jury trial! First, in depositions, he suggested that every attorney had to have a "hook" while taking depositions and that I should try the "dumb blonde approach," really! That approach is never successful, or perhaps I don't seem that dumb. Then, at trial, I suggested that we seek a recess because I had to use the bathroom, but he replied that he would "lose his momentum" and that I could go to the bathroom while he continued with the trial (which I did because of physical necessity). Finally, he did not like my examination of a witness, and he sought to interrupt. Murray Bernhardt had had enough -- when Art sought to interrupt, he said "no," that it was my exam, and in his acquired British accent (he was an American), he continued to refer to Art as Mr. Gibbons, rather than Mr. Biggins. Notwithstanding these problems, which I bore graciously (perhaps too graciously, but I was a polite young woman then), Art and I had a good relationship, and we always enjoyed one another. You had to understand Art's virtually overwhelming energy level, and others have stories about this, if they are still around. We lost Heaven Hill on a strict accounting-issue basis (the Service had permitted the expensing for 30 years, and we were hard-pressed to convince the Court that the Service was entitled to change the taxpayer's accounting method, particularly when the Court believed that it would all even-out in the end -- of course, that's if you ever reach the end). Then, the ultimate whipsaw was when, on the other side, we lost the whiskey maturation facilities investment tax credit argument, for what had been unheated corrugated sheet-metal "warehouses" with an overhanging lightbulb for Heaven Hill because temperature and humidity controlled state-of-the-art facilities for Brown Forman! Such are the unimportant events of life.
The Legal Times reported on 1/18/99 that David Blair became a partner at Miller & Chevalier.
John Murray advised on 10/15/98 that Frank and his partner, Bob Duffy, have joined Mayer, Brown & Platt, a major national law firm with an outstanding tax section. We have not yet received any change of address information and will post that when we do.
Jack has been named one of Washington's 50 best lawyers by the Washingtonian Magazine (February 1997). The accolade read:
"GENTLEMAN JOHN" BRAY, 57, CAME TO Washington in 1962 to work for Robert Kennedy. He epitomizes the Schwalb Donnenfeld style of aggressive defense without a lot of shouting or theatrics.
No one knows the field of criminal tax law like Bray, who represents a lot of lawyers and accountants who have tax problems. He is currently representing grain-company executive Michael Andreas, the son and former heir apparent to Archer Daniels Midland chairman Dwayne Andreas, in what has been described as the largest and most complex antitrust case in history.
Closer to home, Bray is handling the case of Denis Neill of Neill & Company, a Washington-based lobbying firm accused of conspiring to evade taxes on millions of dollars in foreign payments. "I try to be gentlemanly in the nastiest of trials," he says. "We're good, decent people in a rough line of work."
In April 2002, Washingtonian Magazine named Jack among Washington's 75 best lawyers. The write-up on Jack is:
20. JOHN M. BRAY
King & Spalding
WHO WOULDN'T FEEL A PANG OF PANIC WHEN a letter comes from the IRS asking you to bring all your papers downtown? Of the handful of top-notch tax litigators in Washington, no one is better than John Bray.
He has represented some of the biggest names in corporate America, including Michael Andreas, the billionaire vice chairman of grain giant Archer Daniels Midland. The government sought a record fine of $25 million against Andreas in connection with fraud allegations. Bray succeeded in having it knocked down to $350,000. Bray points out that massive investigations like Enron produce "tremendous tax investigations, which spin off into audits" and adds, "in situations like this, everybody is fair game, even people not central to the investigation."
From 6/16/03 Legal Times Article titled "Top of Their Game: 20 Ace Litigators Who Are Best, Say Peers and Clients:"
John "Jack" Bray
King & Spalding
Jack Bray, 64, has been in the thick of high-profile cases since Watergate and is still going strong.
Bray is best known for his white collar defense work but has also had his share of tax, insurance, and antitrust cases. In fact, he started out with the Tax Division of the Justice Department in the Kennedy years, where, he says, he was often asked to quietly lend his services in understaffed civil rights cases. He was present in Oxford, Miss., representing the U.S. government the day that the University of Mississippi was integrated in 1962.
Bray left the government in 1966 for Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn. He then formed a litigation boutique, Schwalb, Donnenfeld, Bray & Silbert, which lasted 20 years before breaking up in 1998. Bray left the firm for the D.C. office of Atlanta's King & Spalding in 1997.
In the Watergate case, Bray represented Gordon Strachan, the only Nixon White House aide who was indicted in the coverup and not convicted; his case was eventually dismissed. In that case, Bray faced off against his one-time partner, Earl Silbert, who was a U.S. attorney at the time.
In 1998, Bray was the lawyer for Michael Andreas, son of Archer Daniels Midland Co. CEO Dwayne Andreas, in a mammoth criminal antitrust case in federal court in Chicago. Andreas was convicted of fixing the price of lysine, a feed additive, but the trial judge rejected the government's attempt to impose a $25 million fine and fined Andreas only $350,000.
The same year, Bray represented Capricia Marshall, the White House social secretary under Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the grand jury and congressional investigations arising out of the Whitewater scandal and the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Marshall's domain in the White House included the residential area in which Clinton's billing records from the Rose Law Firm mysteriously turned up, months after being subpoenaed, and Bray helped Marshall explain the configuration of the room and the circumstances under which the records were found.
Bray has major clients in a shopping center RICO case brought by David Boies that grew out of the efforts of Syracuse, N.Y.-based Pyramid Cos., a major shopping mall developer, to build the largest mall in the country. The commercial matter is taking up a good deal of his time these days.
"I am one of many lawyers who still thinks that trials, even of the most important cases, can be done with civility and ethics. If you want a pit bull, a yeller and a screamer, go get another law firm," Bray says.
Says Earl Silbert of Piper Rudnick, Bray's former partner: "Jack is extremely bright, works very hard, and relates well to judges and jurors. He has a capacity for mastering a great deal of material in comparatively brief time. And he is a precise examiner in both direct and cross-examination."
LOAD-DATE: June 16, 2003
Ernest J. Brown (Deceased 12/31/01)
Retirement for DOJ Tax Division 1/19/01
To view an article from the Washington Post on Professor Brown's retirement, click here.
The following is his more formal obituary.
ERNEST J. BROWN, Special Litigation Counsel at the US Department of Justice from July 1970 until January 19, 2001, and Langdell Professor of Law Emeritus at the Harvard Law School, died on December 31, 2001 in Fort Worth, Texas of heart failure. Widely revered as a teacher, scholar, and advocate, Professor Brown’s students included former Attorneys General Elliot Richardson and Janet Reno, five of the current members of the US Supreme Court, and scores of leaders in politics, law school education, and the federal and state judiciary.
Born in Lake Providence, Louisiana on May 30, 1906 to Dr. John Brown and Mrs. Pearl F. Brown, Professor Brown was educated in the Louisiana Public Schools, Lawrenceville Preparatory School and Princeton University. After a year working in a New York City bank (where he said the only lesson he learned was that he did not want to be a banker), Brown enrolled at the Harvard Law School where he studied with then Professor Felix Frankfurter and was a member of the Harvard Law Review.Following law school, Brown lived for a year in Louisiana where he settled his father’s estate and “read” law with a local attorney. In 1933 he moved to Buffalo, New York, where he practiced law and taught at the University of Buffalo Law School. When World War II broke out, he joined the US Army and became an intelligence officer for the OSS stationed behind enemy lines in China. He was discharged from the Army on Christmas Day 1945 with many honors including the Bronze Star.
In 1946, at the behest of his former professor, Felix Frankfurter, and his former classmate, Erwin Griswold, Brown joined the Harvard Law School faculty where he taught for a quarter of a century. At the beginning he taught a wide variety of courses including contracts and property. Later he settled into his chosen specialties, constitutional law and tax law.
In 1970 Professor Brown took a leave from teaching to serve as Professor in Residence in the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, and in 1971 he retired from Harvard to continue, for an even longer period, in the Justice Department. There he served under two of his former students (Richardson and Reno) and had a guiding role in all federal tax cases that passed through the Department. During his tenure in the Tax Division, Professor Brown played a significant role in formulating the Government’s position in difficult and important tax cases in the federal courts of appeals and in the Supreme Court, drawing upon his unique background as a teacher of constitutional law and tax law. As a result of his victory in Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Blumenthal, a 1980 DC Circuit case that provided the federal government with over $2 billion in financial savings, he was awarded the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award in 1981. In 1991 he received the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award.
Professor Brown is survived by a niece, Ellise Turner (Mrs. Robert J.) of Fort Worth, Texas, a nephew, Dr.William Ernest Weldon, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, several grandnieces and grandnephews, and an army of admirers.
Those desiring more information may contact Jane Edmisten (jmoretz-edmisten@mindspring.com).
The following is from a less formal, more personal article in the Washington Post: 1/5/02.
Tax Lawyer Ernest Brown Dies
Adam Bernstein, Washington Post Staff WriterErnest J. Brown, 95, a Harvard University law professor emeritus who joined the Justice Department at age 64 and enjoyed a second career playing major roles in hundreds of tax-law cases before retiring last January as special litigation counsel, died Dec. 31 at a Fort Worth assisted-living facility.
He had congestive heart failure and prostate cancer. In June, he moved from Shirlington to Fort Worth to be closer to his niece.
At Harvard from 1946 to 1970, Mr. Brown was known for his expertise in constitutional and tax law. He taught several generations of students who became high-profile lawyers, including former attorney general Janet Reno and Supreme Court Justices David H. Souter, Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
He was a 1931 graduate of the law school, where he worked on the law review and was a student of legal titans Thomas Reed Powell and Felix Frankfurter. Frankfurter, who in 1939 was appointed a Supreme Court associate justice by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, became one of several lifelong admirers, once complimenting Mr. Brown by saying: "He thinks in paragraphs."
In 1946, former U.S. solicitor general Erwin N. Griswold became the Harvard Law School dean and recruited Mr. Brown to teach there. They had overlapped at Harvard years earlier and had mutual friends.
Mr. Brown's teaching style was to approach the tax code like the Constitution and the Constitution like the code. He tried to make students aware of the text of the Constitution -- he complained that few knew a single sentence of it -- and to see each component of the tax code as part of a larger structure.
Student protests over Vietnam and other political schisms of the late 1960s prompted Mr. Brown to take a position as professor in residence at Justice in 1970. He frowned upon what he saw as a lessening of academic standards and a permissiveness in decorum that bordered on the rude.
"Propriety was always important to him. He was appalled by people on airplanes in blue jeans," said his niece, Ellise W. Turner, of Fort Worth.Yet for all his higher-profile work and devotion to etiquette, he also carried out duties others might deem menial. At Justice near Christmas one year, a government brief had to be rushed to Philadelphia after post office hours. Mr. Brown, who was single, volunteered to take it by train so co-workers with families would be spared the trouble.
His government work was fueled by a continuing fascination with the law at an age when most wanted to retire. He told The Washington Post he "had no feeling of being done" with his life.
To his Justice colleagues, his extensive knowledge of tax law and its history was invaluable.
"It's often said of senior practitioners that they 'have forgotten more than I ever knew,' " Mike Paup, a former chief of the tax division's appellate section, told The Post last year. "In Ernest's case, I don't think he forgot."
Mr. Brown became an official member of the appellate section and had a say in most policy decisions about tax litigation.
He was a recipient in 1981 of a Justice Department Distinguished Service Award for his work on Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Blumenthal, a D.C. Circuit Court case that ultimately saved the government more than $1 billion on a complicated gas excise case involving the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush presented Mr. Brown with a Distinguished Presidential Rank Award.
In his spare time, Mr. Brown devoured biographical books and visited art museums. He also was a Mozart aficionado and had an extensive CD collection. When he retired from Justice, his co-workers bought him a combination radio and CD player.
A private man, he kept a close circle of friends whom he would accompany to favorite restaurants. He retained a soft spot for the spicy food of his native Louisiana.
Ernest Joseph Brown was born in Lake Providence, La. His father was a family practitioner, bank president, drugstore proprietor and farm owner in that cotton-growing community. He often accompanied his father on all sorts of duties and was encouraged to pursue banking.
After graduating from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and Princeton University, in 1927, he had a short and unpleasant stint as a New York banker.
He then enrolled at Harvard and, after graduation, headed to Buffalo, a medium-size city where he felt he could carve out a good reputation for himself at a large law firm. He also started teaching at the University of Buffalo Law School.
He did a great deal of litigation work, often for clients with grievances against what was then the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
When the United States entered World War II, he left his practice to join the legal staff of the War Production Board, followed by service in the Army Air Forces and the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA. He was stationed in China with the OSS and often worked behind enemy lines to report enemy troop movements. His decorations included the Bronze Star.
He returned from the war as acting dean of the University of Buffalo Law School before joining Harvard.
He once said he only gradually came to enjoy tax law but was hooked on it soon after taking his first job in Buffalo. "It touches many of the fields of human endeavor, and I continue to find it fascinating," he said.
He leaves no immediate survivors.
The following is an article by Alum Mary Lou Fahey in the Tax Executive:
The tax world lost a titan in December. Although perhaps not well known among TEI members, Ernest Brown, former Special Litigation Counsel with the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, left his mark on every piece of major appellate tax litigation for the past 30 years. Mr. Brown retired from the Justice Department in January 2001 at the age of 94.
Mr. Brown's service at the Justice Department came after he retired from teaching constitutional and tax law at the Harvard Law School in 1971. Among his former students were two Attorneys General under whom he served -- Elliott Richardson and Janet Reno -- and five current members of the Supreme Court -- Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and David H. Souter. He also taught such tax luminaries as former IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander and former Assistant Treasury Secretary Donald Lubbick. Hundreds of other tax and constitutional scholars passed through his classroom from 1946 through 1970.
I first met Ernest Brown when I joined the appellate section of the Justice Department's Tax Division in 1980. He was a legendary figure by then and a bit intimidating to a neophyte attorney just out of law school.
I vividly remember my first encounter with him. I had drafted an opposition to a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court (cert ops, as we called them) which involved a procedural issue. After running through several layers of review, the cert op finally landed on Mr. Brown's desk. He was not happy with it. He arrived at my office door, holding the document by the edge as if it would bite. He dropped it on my desk, pointed a finger at an offending paragraph, and stated in stentorian tones, "This is wrong." With no further explanation, he turned and began to leave.
"But," I managed to stammer, "Moore's [Federal Practice] says ..." I got no further. Mr. Brown turned and said to me, "Moore's is wrong." He then left, leaving me to ponder whether I should have taken up labor law.
Sometime later, I managed to redeem myself when he discovered my passion for theater, including Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. When Mr. Brown (I could never bring myself to call him Ernest or Ernie) taught at the University of Buffalo School of Law in the 1930s, he would regularly travel to New York City to catch the shows. There he saw such theatrical names as the Barrymores -- John, Ethel, and Lionel -- and the two Katherines -- Cornell and Hepburn. He loved to talk about those incredible productions and he found an envious audience in me. When PBS ran a series of Gilbert and Sullivan productions -- ranging from the little known Cox and Box to the more popular Mikado -- he would eagerly approach me in the law library the next day to see how I enjoyed the broadcast. If I had missed the show, his face would fall and I would feel as though I had let him down. He knew far more about the productions than I did, but he relished talking about the acting abilities of Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum (not to mention the Grand Poobah).
The biggest treat for the attorneys in the Tax Division did not involve discussing arcane provisions of the tax law, but rather listening to Mr. Brown talk about his World War II service in the Army Air Force and Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor to the CIA). A modest and soft-spoken man, he was never one to brag and he only discussed his flying days after much prodding (and generally in small groups). He was stationed in China with the OSS and often worked behind enemy lines to report troop movements. He often laughed about sitting in beat-up, drafty planes as he "flew the hump." He was awarded a bronze star for his service.
Mr. Brown also received awards for his service to the Tax Division. In 1981, he received the Justice Department's Distinguished Service Award for his work in Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Blumenthal, a complicated excise tax case that won the government more than $2 billion in financial savings. Ten years later, he received the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award from President George H.W. Bush.
After I left the Department in 1985, I often ran into Mr. Brown on his lunch-time walks around the main Justice building on Pennsylvania Avenue. He would bow slightly and inquire in his soft Louisiana accent how I was doing. In recent years, his physical health obviously deteriorated, but his mind remained as quick and lively as ever. As his former appellate section boss, Mike Paup, told The Washington Post upon Mr. Brown's retirement last year, "It's often said about senior practitioners that they 'have forgotten more than I ever knew.' In Ernest's case, I don't think he forgot."
There's a story that circulated the Justice Department shortly after Attorney General Reno took office in 1993. The new head of the Department called in all her division heads for a briefing. When she got to the Tax Division, she remarked, "All I know about tax I learned from Ernie Brown at Harvard." There was a slight pause. "He works for you now," was the reply. The next morning the Attorney General appeared at Mr. Brown's door and she came back every May 30 thereafter with a birthday cake for him.
When he retired last year, General Reno stated, "Ernest Brown represents to me what public service is about. After a full career as a professor of constitutional and tax law at Harvard Law School, he has served over 30 years here in the Department. The Department of Justice has been well served by his knowledge and expertise as well as his love of the law and the Constitution."
An extraordinary man. An extraordinary life. I count myself fortunate to have known a giant such as Ernest Brown.
Clinton Bleecker Duma Brown, a retired Justice Department lawyer, died of a heart ailment on February 1 at his home in Washington. He began his career with the Justice Department in its internal security division in 1954. From 1961 until retiring from Justice in 1977, he served in the tax division. In 1980, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for D.C.'s mayor. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, the former Nona Pugh Baldwin of Washington.
According to TNT on 3/3/98, effective 3/2/98, IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti has picked an expert on appellate matters from the Justice Department's Tax Division to serve as his assistant. TNT reports that Kevin was special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Loretta C. Argrett. He previously worked in the Tax Division's appellate section, which he joined just after graduating from law school in 1987.
Since the Commissioner resigned effective May 4, 2007, Kevin has served as the Acting Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
Jim Bruton and his partner at Williams & Connolly, Jerry Feffer, have received press. Press here to review a summary.
The Washington POST on April 4, 2001, reported the death on April 1 of RICHARD BROWN BUHRMAN, 86, in Alexandria, VA., a victim of Parkinson's Disease. He had retired from the Appellate Section of the Tax Division in 1978. Mr. Buhrman was a native of New Jersey, had served in the Navy in World War Two, and worked with the Internal Revenue Service before joining the Tax Division. He was survived by his wife, three children and six grandchildren.
Jane Bergner advised that the Mary Jane Burruss died January 7, 2000. Jane advised that she worked in the Review Section before transferring to the Antitrust Division. The obituary from the Washington Post is as follows:
Mary Jane Burruss, 75, a Justice Department lawyer who retired from the antitrust division in 1980, died of cancer Jan. 7 at Fair Oaks Hospital.
Mrs. Burruss was born in Nashua, N.H., and graduated from Wellesley College.
She received a law degree from George Washington University and began her career at the Department of Justice in the 1950s.
Mrs. Burruss, a resident of Fairfax City, had served on its Planning Commission from 1967 to 1979.
She had been active with the Wellesley Club of Washington, Zonta International and Meals on Wheels.
Her marriage to Robert Burruss ended in divorce.