Maurer School of Law: Indiana University Digital Repository @ Maurer Law Articles by Maurer Faculty Faculty Scholarship 2011 From Programmatic Reform to Social Science Research: The National Tax Association and the Promise and Perils of Disciplinary Encounters Ajay K. Mehrotra Indiana University Maurer School of Law Joseph J. Thorndike Tax Analysts Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub Part of the Public Economics Commons, and the Tax Law Commons Recommended Citation Mehrotra, Ajay K. and Thorndike, Joseph J., "From Programmatic Reform to Social Science Research: The National Tax Association and the Promise and Perils of Disciplinary Encounters" (2011). Articles by Maurer Faculty. 2532. https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub/2532 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by Maurer Faculty by an authorized administrator of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 593 From Programmatic Reform to Social Science Research: The National Tax Association and the Promise and Perils of Disciplinary Encounters Ajay K. Mehrotra Joseph J. Thorndike This article uses the history of the National Tax Association (NTA), the leading twentieth-century organization of tax professionals, to strengthen our empiri- cal understanding of the disciplinary encounter between law and the social sciences. Building on existing sociolegal scholarship, this article explores how the NTA embodied tax law's ambivalent historical interaction with public economics. Since its founding in 1907, the NTA has changed dramatically from an eclectic and catholic organization of tax professionals with a high public profile to an insular, scholarly association of mainly academic public finance economists.