Background

Tessa Davis is a professor of law specializing in taxation and tax policy at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law. Davis focuses her research on the ways in which tax law and policy are influenced by cultural context. Her research interests include the intersection of tax with many different areas of law, including immigration law, family law, law and technology, and health law. Her scholarship has appeared in many respected journals, including Denver Law Review, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, the Florida State University Law Review, the Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender, the Florida State University Journal of Transnational Law & Policy, Kentucky Law Journal, Oregon Law Review, and the George Mason Law Review. 

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina, Davis was a visiting assistant professor at Tulane University Law School. She earned an LLM in Taxation in 2012 from New York University School of Law and received her JD from Florida State University College of Law, where she graduated Order of the Coif.  While at NYU, Davis received a 2011 Tannenwald Award for Excellence in Tax Scholarship for her article “Reproducing Value: How Tax Law Differentially Values Fertility, Sexuality & Marriage” (Cardozo Journal of Law and Gender, Fall 2012). She also received the Florida State University Law Review award for “Outstanding Student Piece of the Year” for an article focusing on international law. Davis graduated from Davidson College with a BA in Anthropology, and received an MSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics.

Scholarship

Articles

• Revisiting the Tax Treatment of Alimony, 71 L. Rev. 379 (2023) (with Amy Soled and Jay A. Soled).
• Taxing the Cyborg,  101 Or. L. Rev. 137 (2022).
• Taxing Choices, 16 FIU L. Rev. 327 (2022).
• Freezing the Future: Elective Egg Freezing and the Limits of the Medical Expense Deduction, 107 Ky. L.J. 373 (2019).
• A Human Capital Theory of Alimony and Tax, 25 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 352 (2018).
• The Tax-Immigration Nexus, 94 Denv. L. Rev. 195 (2017).
• Tax and Social Context: Legal Fictions and Tax, Savannah L. Rev. (2017) (American Legal Fictions Symposium).
• Mapping the Families of the Internal Revenue Code, 22 Va. J. Soc. Pol’y & L. 181 (2015).
• Reproducing Value: How Tax Law Differentially Values Fertility, Sexuality & Marriage, 19 Cardozo J. L. & Gender 1 (2012).
• Lost in Doctrine: Particular Social Group, Child Soldiers and the Failure of U.S. Asylum Law to Protect Exploited Children, 38 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 653 (2011).
• Taking International Law At Its Word and Its Spirit: Re-envisioning Responsibility to Protect as a Binding Principle of International Law, 38 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 884 (2011).
• Keeping the Welcome Mat Rolled-Up: Social Justice Theorists’ Failure to Embrace Adverse Possession as a Redistributive Tool, 20 J. Transnat’l L. & Pol’y 73 (2010).

Books

• Imagining the Body: Tax, Law, and Our Economic Selves (Cambridge University Press 2026).

Other Publications

• Critical Tax Meets Law and Political Economy: A Conversation (with Jeremy Bearer-Friend, Bridget J. Crawford, Anthony C. Infanti, Ariel Jurow Kleiman, Goldburn P. Maynard, Jr., Blaine G. Saito, and Clinton G. Wallace) (forthcoming Ohio State Law Journal Online 2027).
• Is There a A Gendered Body in Tax? (Pitt Tax Rev. 2025).
• Commodification, Precarity, and Identity: A Review of Bridget Crawford’s Taxing Sugar Babies, 107 Minnesota Law Review Headnotes 59 (2025).
• “Taxation and Belonging: The History and Rhetoric of Tax, Full Citizenship, and Community Membership”inTaxation, Citizenship, and Democracy in the 21^st Century, Eds. Yvette.
• Lind & Reuven Avi-Yonah (Edward Elgar Publishing 2024).
• Tax’s Power: Feminism, Tax, and the Making of Society, in The Political Philosophy of Taxation (2022).
• Taxing Values: What Our Tax Code Says About Us, in Demand the Impossible: Essays in History as Activism (2018).

Education

• LL.M., New York University
• J.D., Florida State University
• M.Sc., London School of Economics
• B.A., Davidson College

Teaching

• Property (LAWS 509)
• Income Tax (LAWS 633)
• Corporate Tax (LAWS 636)
• Partnership and LLC Taxation (LAWS 637)
• Tax Policy Seminar (LAWS 638)
• Law and Literature (LAWS 775)
• Taxation of Property Transactions (LAWS 802)
• Feminist Legal Theory (LAWS 846)
• Reading Group | Buying Civilization: Tax Law and the Making of Society (LAWS 899)