Ajay K. Mehrotra

Stanford Clinton Sr. and Zylpha Kilbride Clinton Research Professor of Law

Phone
(312) 503-8436

Email
ajay.mehrotra@law.northwestern.edu

SSRN Author Page | Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Assistant
Miyoki Walker

Assistant Phone
(312) 503-8374

Assistant Email
miyoki.walker@law.northwestern.edu

Biography

Ajay K. Mehrotra is the Stanford Clinton Sr. and Zylpha Kilbride Clinton Research Professor of Law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and an Affiliated Professor of History at Northwestern University. He is also a Research Professor and Former Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation (ABF), an independent, non-profit research institute that focuses on the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. During the 2025-26 academic year (September – June), Mehrotra will be a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City.

His scholarship and teaching focus on legal history, tax law, and diversity in legal education and the profession. More generally, his research explores law and political economy in historical and comparative perspective, with a particular focus on tax law and fiscal policy. He is the author of Making the Modern American Fiscal State: Law, Politics, and the Rise of Progressive Taxation, 1877-1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), co-editor (with Lawrence Zelenak) of A Half-Century with the Internal Revenue Code: The Memoirs of Stanley S. Surrey (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2022), and co-editor (with Isaac William Martin and Monica Prasad) of The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). He has published articles in leading interdisciplinary and history journals as well as student-edited law reviews. His writings have also appeared in Bloomberg.com, Law360.com, Time, Washington Monthly, The Washington Post, and other news and opinion outlets. Mehrotra has received grants and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Science Foundation, and several other organizations.

Before joining the ABF and Northwestern, Mehrotra taught American legal history, federal income tax, taxation of business entities, and tax policy at the Indiana University (IU) Maurer School of Law. He also co-taught strategic tax planning at the IU Kelley School of Business. From 2012-15, Mehrotra served as the IU law school's associate dean for research. He was also an adjunct Professor of History at IU and an Affiliated Faculty member of the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis. While at Indiana University, Mehrotra received the law school’s Leon E. Wallace Teaching Award, and Indiana University’s Trustees Teaching Award.

Prior to his time at Indiana University, he was a Doctoral Fellow at the ABF. After law school and before he embarked on his academic career, Mehrotra was an Associate in the Structured Finance department of the New York offices of J.P. Morgan.

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Areas of Expertise

Legal History
Tax Law
Taxation
Legal Profession
Legal Education
Tax Policy

Courses

Selected Publications

The Rise and Entrenchment of the Antitax Movement: A Review Article, __ Political Science Quarterly qqaf041 (2025).
The Intellectual Origins of the Modern International Tax Regime: Edwin R. A. Seligman, Economic Allegiance, and the League of Nations' 1923 Report, 5 Journal of Law & Political Economy 995 (2025).
A Half-century with the Internal Revenue Code: The Memoirs of Stanley S. Surrey (Lawrence A. Zelenak & Ajay K. Mehrotra eds., 2022).
Experts, Democracy, and the Historical Irony of U.S. Tax Policy: Thomas S. Adams and the Beginnings of the Value-Added Tax, 5 Modern American History 239 (2022).
The Missing U.S. VAT: Economic Inequality, American Fiscal Exceptionalism, and the Historical U.S. Resistance to National Consumption Taxes, 117 Northwestern University Law Review 151 (2022).
Making the Modern American Fiscal State: Law, Politics, and The Rise of Progressive Taxation, 1877-1929 (2013).

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Education

BA, University of Michigan
JD, Georgetown University
PhD, University of Chicago

Prior Appointments

William G. and Virginia K. Karnes Research Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
Professor of Law & Niezer Faculty Fellow, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Associate Dean for Research, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Co-Director, Indiana University Center for Law, Society & Culture, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts & Sciences

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