Joshua D. Blank
Joshua D. Blank is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Prior to joining UCI Law in 2018, Blank was a member of the full-time faculty of NYU School of Law, where he served as Professor of Tax Law, Vice Dean for Technology-Enhanced Education, and Faculty Director of its Graduate Tax Program.
Professor Blank is an internationally recognized tax law scholar and expert on tax administration and compliance, tax privacy and tax transparency, and administrative agency explanations of the law. His books include Untaxed: The Rich, the IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower) (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Automated Agencies: The Transformation of Government Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky) (Cambridge University Press, 2025). His articles have appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, NYU Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Tax Law Review, Yale Law & Policy Review, and the Harvard Journal on Legislation, among other journals. Blank is a frequent contributor to Bloomberg, CNN, Fortune, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.
Blank received a 2020 Teacher of the Year Award from the Association of American Law Schools, the 2017 Legal Teaching Award from the NYU School of Law Alumni Association, and the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award from NYU School of Law in 2014. In 2021, Blank was selected by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) (with his co-author, Professor Leigh Osofsky) to conduct a study of U.S. federal government agencies’ use of automated tools, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, to explain the law to the public. In 2022, ACUS voted to adopt twenty policy recommendations based on his co-authored report, which were then published in the Federal Register and circulated to the federal agencies.
In 2024, Blank was appointed to serve as Chair of the Teaching Taxation Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, one of the largest organizations of tax law professors in the U.S. Blank is an elected member of the executive committee of the International Fiscal Association (USA Branch) and is a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and the American Bar Foundation.
Blank previously served as an assistant professor of law at Rutgers School of Law – Newark, and was an acting assistant professor of tax law in the NYU Graduate Tax Program. He has taught tax law as a visiting professor at Hebrew University, Bocconi University, IDC Herzliya and the Internal Revenue Service. Prior to academia, Blank was a tax lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Blank received his B.A., summa cum laude, from NYU, College of Arts and Science; his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School; and his LL.M. in taxation from NYU Law.
