Professor David Blankfein-Tabachnick’s work focuses on private law, taxation, and tax policy. His careful scholarship – articulating a distributive account of the private law – poses a fundamental challenge to the conventional dichotomy between the private law and taxation and their relationship to distributive economic values. Described as “shifting the paradigm in private law theory,” his work has been recognized as a formative contribution, revitalizing academic discussion and igniting a renewed scholarly debate.
Conversant across a wide range of private law subjects and taxation, Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick embodies a combination of careful attention to legal doctrine and theoretical sophistication. He has published on bankruptcy, contracts, criminal law, property and intellectual property, taxation, and tort law. His work appears in preeminent law reviews and peer-edited journals, including the California Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, George Washington Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and repeatedly in the Virginia Law Review and the Cambridge University Press journal, Social Philosophy and Policy.
His work on contractualism and the private law, intellectual property, and tort law has been the subject of extended engagement in leading law reviews, including the California Law Review in 2013, the Virginia Law Review in 2006, and, again, in the Virginia Law Review in 2024. His scholarship has also been discussed in peer-edited journals and academic monographs—his contributions to the current rethinking in private law were noted in the 2014 H.L.A. Hart Memorial Lecture. In a career highlight, he was invited to present his work at the Private Law Workshop at Harvard Law School in the spring of 2023. Additionally, his scholarship has been reprinted in notable anthologies, including Rawls and Law, and he has been invited to discuss his ideas throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States.
Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick joined the Michigan State University College of Law faculty in 2014 and was awarded tenure in 2020. He was appointed Associate Dean for Research in the summer of 2023 and was quickly promoted to Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Intellectual Life in the winter of 2023. He served as Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Michigan in the spring of 2023, teaching Contracts and Intellectual Property. In 2015-16, he was a Visiting Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, teaching Criminal Law, Copyright, and Property. He has been a visiting scholar at the Yale Law School and a visiting faculty member at Penn State Law. He is a recurring visiting professor at the Peking University School of Transnational Law, where he is a member of the founding faculty.
In 2017, he was appointed Faculty Advisor to the Michigan State Law Review. Since his appointment, the journal has risen nearly fifty places in W&L’s ranking of flagship American law reviews to 56th overall and 39th for scholarly impact. Under his leadership, the journal has published some of the world’s most distinguished legal scholars, established the Visionary Scholar Article Series, and the Law Review Symposium-Faculty Workshop Series. In 2006, he co-created and innovated the widely cited Virginia Law Review symposium, Contemporary Political Theory and the Private Law, an event and corresponding publication that brought together the work of prominent scholars and continues to influence and shape the field.
An accomplished lecturer and teacher, he was honored with a university-wide award recognizing excellence in teaching from the University of Virginia. In 2021, he became the first MSU College of Law faculty member to receive the prestigious university-wide Michigan State All-University Teacher-Scholar Award.
He has taught courses on bankruptcy, copyrights, contracts, criminal law, federal income tax, intellectual property, international relations, legal and political theory, property, property II, remedies, tax policy, torts, and trusts and estates.
An active and dedicated faculty leader, Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick is a member of the Law College’s Intellectual Property, Information and Communications Law Program. He served as the College of Law Representative to the University Council and University Senate, and on the 2020-21 College of Law Dean Search Committee.
Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick has repeatedly served as Chair or Co-Chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee in 2020-21, 2021-22, 2023-24, 2024-25, and currently serves as the 2025-26 Chair. His leadership on the committee has enjoyed unprecedented successes, including the hiring of ten top-flight tenure-system faculty members and several clinical and legal writing faculty members.
Additionally, he leads the weekly MSU Law Faculty Workshop Series, hosting top scholars and providing a platform for the College’s own faculty to present their work. The scholarship presented in this forum is regularly published in the nation’s most prestigious law journals.
A principal architect of the College of Law’s recent academic transformation, Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick spearheaded the school’s successful 2024-25 application for a chapter of the Order of the Coif – a significant milestone in the intellectual life of the institution. His enthusiasm and creative vision for the Law College were critical to the outcome.
Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick holds a Ph.D. in legal and political philosophy from the University of Virginia and a degree in law from Yale.
A descendant of Holocaust survivors and a fifth-generation New Yorker, he has a deep interest in Jewish culture’s resilience and its contributions to political liberalism, the arts, finance, and the learned professions. When the Law College is not in session, he lives in New York City.
Download Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
M.S.L. Yale Law School
Ph.D. University of Virginia
M.A. University of Rochester
B.A. Ithaca College
“On Rawlsian Contractualism and the Private Law,” 108 Virginia Law Review (2022) (with K. Kordana). Simultaneously Published in Print and Online Editions, Reviewed, Gregory Keating, “Shifting the Paradigm in Private Law Theory,” JOTWELL (Sept. 29, 2023); published response in a separate volume, Samuel Freeman, “A Response to David Blankfein-Tabachnick & Kevin A. Kordana, On Rawlsian Contractualism and the Private Law” 110 Virginia Law Review (2024).
"Maximizing Intellectual Property: Optimality, Synchronicity and Distributive Justice," 94 St. John's Law Review (2020).
"Kaplow and Shavell and the Priority of Income Taxation and Transfer," 69 Hastings Law Journal 1 (2017) (with K. Kordana).
"Property, Duress, and Consensual Relationships," 114 Michigan Law Review 1013 (2016). (reviewing Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality and the Law, Princeton University Press, 2014).
"Intellectual Property Doctrine and Midlevel Principles," 101 California Law Review 1315 (2013); published response, Robert P. Merges, "Foundations and Principles Redux: A Reply to Professor Blankfein-Tabachnick," 101 California Law Review 1361 (2013).
"On Belling the Cat: Rawls and Tort as Corrective Justice," 92 Virginia Law Review 1279 (2006) (with K. Kordana); published response, Steven Walt, "Eliminating Corrective Justice," 92 Virginia Law Review 1311 (2006); Reprinted in Rawls and Law (Routledge Publishing, 2012).
"Does Intellectual Property Have Foundations?" 45 Connecticut Law Review 995 (2013) (reviewing Robert Merges, Justifying Intellectual Property (Harvard University Press, 2011)).
"The Rawlsian View of Private Ordering," 25 Social Philosophy & Policy, 288 (2008) (with K. Kordana) (Cambridge University Press Journal); Reprinted in Freedom of Association (Cambridge University Press 2008).
"Taxation, the Private Law, and Distributive Justice," 23 Social Philosophy & Policy, 142 (2006) (with K. Kordana) (Cambridge University Press Journal); Reprinted in Taxation, Economic Prosperity, and Distributive Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
"Rawls and Contract Law," 73 George Washington Law Review 701 (2005) (with K. Kordana).
"Tax and the Philosopher's Stone," 89 Virginia Law Review 647 (2003) (with K. Kordana) (reviewing Liam Murphy & Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, Oxford University Press, 2002)).
Bankruptcy
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of bankruptcy law, the bankruptcy code, and the creditor/debtor relationship.Students who have taken Consumer Bankruptcy 506E or Chapter 11 Reorganization 506F may not take this course.
Basic Income Taxation B
(Formerly DCL 250)
Like Basic Income Taxation A, this course introduces the basic concepts of federal income taxation. Basic Income Taxation B, however, goes beyond a survey course by a rigorous examination of technical tax issues, including a focus on solving complex tax problems. This course is ideal for students interested in pursuing legal practice in the tax or business fields. Students will be exposed to the same topics covered in Basic Income Taxation A, but will also study additional topics. Topics likely to be covered include: business and profit-seeking expenditures, capital expenditures, depreciation, the home-office deduction, tax planning for divorce, non-recourse debt, including issues relating to basis and amount realized, and anti-tax abuse provisions limiting tax shelters, including at-risk rules and active participation requirements. In resolving problems, students will have ample opportunity to develop facility in interpreting complex statutes and in applying law from various additional sources. Moreover, the themes studied will allow students to understand that tax legislation is a dynamic process in which the law evolves as a result of taxpayers devising new strategies and from policymakers' responses.
Contracts
(Formerly LAW500D and LAW500E)
A study of the basic law relating to the formation of a contract. Additional topics include: the Statute of Frauds; the avoidability of contracts; performance obligations; contract breach and remedies for breach. Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code covering sales of goods will be introduced; however, the primary focus of the course is on the common law.
Decedents' Estates and Trusts
Effective fall 2016 name changed to Trusts and Estates. A study of the pattern of practices for transmitting wealth in view of death. The course surveys probate jurisdiction and administration; intestate succession; limitations on testamentary power; execution requirements for wills; revocation, revalidation and revival of wills; incorporation by reference; contest of wills and related remedies. Also covered are the private express trust, inter vivos and testamentary, including functions, prohibited trust purposes and requisites for creation; informal and incomplete trusts, including resulting, constructive and savings bank trusts; termination of trusts; gifts to charity, including historical backgrounds, nature of charitable purposes
and cy pres; powers and duties of the fiduciary; and remedies of beneficiaries in case of breach of duty.
Intellectual Property Survey
(Formerly DCL 321 and LAW 533V)
Formerly known as Intellectual Property Law. This course could be offered for 2 or 3 credits.
This course is a survey of all Intellectual Property law, including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secret law. No technical degree is necessary.
Property
(Formerly DCL 113)
This is a survey course of the fundamentals of property law. Possessory interests of real and personal property including findings, bailments and adverse possession are discussed and analyzed. Topics also include future interests, concurrent ownership, lease holds, transfers of land and land use controls.
Tax Policy Seminar
(Formerly DCl 517)
This seminar covers a range of tax policy issues arising from Federal Taxation. The specific issues studied will vary but, in general, will focus on progressivity and redistribution. Topics likely to be covered include: the use of the income tax as a fiscal policy tool; the concept of income; imputed income; progressive versus flat tax rates; taxation of families; income versus consumption taxation; tax expenditures, exclusions, and deductions; taxation of business and investment income; capital gains and losses; and transfer or wealth taxes. A paper will be required. The topic will be determined after consultation with the instructor.
