Frances R Hill

Frances R. Hill, Professor of Law and Dean's Distinguished Scholar for the Profession, teaches and writes in the areas of federal income tax, constitutional law, and election law. She served as the Director of the Law School's Graduate Program in Taxation from 2001-10.

Before joining the University of Miami Law School faculty in 1992, Professor Hill practiced in the Tax Group of Jones Day in the firm's Washington, D.C., and London offices. While in practice, she represented publicly traded corporations in a wide range of domestic and cross-border matters, as well as a wide range of tax exempt entities on issues involving complex structures and joint ventures with taxable entities.

At the Law School, Professor Hill has taught courses in corporate tax, advanced corporate tax, tax policy, taxation of exempt organizations, bankruptcy tax, and federal income tax as well as courses in bankruptcy and commercial law. Most of her teaching in tax has focused on graduate courses, most of which are open to qualified J.D. students. She also teaches Constitutional Law I, focusing on structural issues relating to balance of powers and federalism. She has taught an advanced structural constitutional law course, Health Care and the Constitution. Professor Hill also teaches a seminar on election law, which often focuses on campaign finance.

Professor Hill's scholarship has focused on tax exempt organizations. She is the co-author of a widely-used professional treatise on exempt entity taxation, Taxation of Exempt Entities, which includes a cumulative supplement which is updated twice each year. She has written extensively on the roles of exempt entities in campaign finance, which focuses on the intersection of tax law, federal election law, and constitutional law. Professor Hill also writes on structural constitutional law, with a particular focus on issues of representation, participation, and association. Her current scholarship in constitutional law focuses on Spending Clause jurisprudence.

Professor Hill has been actively involved throughout her career in shaping tax policy relating to exempt entities. She has testified several times before the tax-writing committees of the United States Congress and before the Federal Election Commission. She has authored an amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court and has joined groups of constitutional law professors in signing two other amicus briefs relating to campaign finance issues. Professor Hill regularly speaks at conferences for professional advisers and leaders of exempt entities.

Professor Hill is actively involved in professional associations. An elected member of the American Law Institute, she is currently participating in the project on Ethics as a member of the Members' Consultative Committee. She is also active in the American Bar Association Section of Taxation and has spoken frequently at Tax Section meetings on exempt organization topics as well as on working with tax adjuncts in graduate tax programs.

Professor Hill's current scholarship is centered on a project with the working title,Charities in the Public Square, exploring the exempt entities' relations with governments and market actors. It challenges the idea that exempt entities constitute an "independent sector" by tracing the patterns of intersection and dependence that shape exempt organizations.

Area of Expertise