Karin Spidel
kspidel@SanDiego.edu
(619) 260-2962
Associate Dean of Faculty; Richard and Kaye Woltman Professor in Finance
- LLM, 2003, New York University School of Law
- JD, 1996, University of Chicago Law School
- BA, 1993, Duke University
Areas of Expertise
Tax Law and Policy, Wealth and Wealth Transfer Taxation, Charitable Giving and Nonprofit Law, Universal Basic Income, Estate Planning and Wills and Trusts
Professional Experience
Fleischer joined the USD School of Law faculty in 2013. She has also taught as a tenured or tenure-track professor at the University of Colorado Law School and the University of Illinois College of Law, and as an acting assistant professor at NYU Law School (where she served as assistant editor of the Tax Law Review). Before entering academia, Fleischer practiced as an estate planner at Shaw Pittman LLP and as a litigator at the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group, which piqued her interest in charitable giving. She also clerked for Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold of the Eight Circuit in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Honors and Affiliations
Professor Fleischer is a member of the American Law Institute. In 2022, Professor Fleischer was named the Richard and Kaye Woltman Professor in Finance. Most recently, Professor Fleischer was named the 2024-2025 Herzog Endowed Scholar, a title she also held in 2017-2018. Previously, she was named a 2020-2021 University Professor, which recognizes outstanding scholarly achievements in teaching and research supporting the mission and goals of the university. Before that, she won the University of San Diego Law School’s 2014-2015 Thorsnes Prize for Excellence in Teaching (determined by student vote). At the University of Colorado, she was awarded the 2011 Provost’s Achievement Award, a university-wide award recognizing her 2010 article "Theorizing the Charitable Tax Subsidies: The Role of Distributive Justice." As an LLM student at NYU, Fleischer won the Harry J. Rudick Memorial Award for Academic Achievement and was a student editor of the Tax Law Review. As a JD student, she was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review.
Scholarly Work
- Equality of Opportunity and the Case for a Universal Child Allowance, 100 Southern California Law Review (forthcoming 2027)
- A Comprehensive Child Tax Credit, 78 Tax Law Review (forthcoming 2026)
- Symmetry and Speech: Nonprofits and the First Amendment, 103 Washington University Law Review (forthcoming 2026)
- The Logic of the Transfer Taxes: A Guide to the Federal Taxation of Wealth Transfers (3rd ed., West Academic Publishing 2026) (with Cunningham & Cunningham)
- A New Look at Old Money, 98 Southern California Law Review 1439 (2025)
- Universal Basic Income: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2023) (with Matt Zwolinski)
- Death and Taxes: A Libertarian Appraisal, 39 Social Philosophy & Policy 90 (2022)
- Taxation, in The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism (Matt Zwolinski & Benjamin Ferguson eds., Routledge 2022)
- The Morality of Charitable Bequests, in Inheritance and the Right to Bequeath: Legal and Philosophical Perspectives (Daniel Halliday et al ed., Routledge 2022)
- Taxing Old Money: Considerations in Crafting a Rignano Tax, 2020 Law, Ethics and Philosophy 86 (2020)
- The Architecture of a Basic Income, 87 University of Chicago Law Review (2020) (with Hemel)
- Libertarian Perspectives on Basic Income, in The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income (Malcolm Torry ed., Palgrave Macmillan 2019) (with Lehto)
- Subsidizing Charity Liberally, in Research Handbook on Not-for-Profit Law (Matthew Harding ed., Edward Elgar Publishing 2018)
- Atlas Nods: The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income, 2017 Wisconsin Law Review 1189 (2017) (with Hemel)
- How is the Opera Like a Soup Kitchen?, in The Philosophical Foundations of Tax Law (Monica Bandhari ed., Oxford University Press 2017)
- Divide and Conquer: Using an Accessions Tax to Combat Dynastic Wealth Transfers, 57 Boston College Law Review 913 (2016)