Ruth Mason
- Edwin S. Cohen Distinguished Professor of Law and Taxation
- Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law
- Director, Virginia Center for Tax Law
Ruth Mason joined the University of Virginia School of Law faculty in 2013.
Her research focuses on federalism and the dormant Commerce Clause and cross-border taxation. Mason’s work on comparative fiscal federalism has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and in an advocate general’s opinion for the Court of Justice of the European Union.
A recipient of the University Research Award, Mason’s articles are forthcoming or have appeared in top U.S. law reviews, including the Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Duke Law Review, NYU Law Review and Virginia Law Review, as well as top peer-reviewed specialty journals, including the Tax Law Review and British Tax Review. Mason also has contributed to Foreign Affairs and regularly contributes to Tax Notes. The chair lecture she gave on being named the Edwin S. Cohen Distinguished Professor of Law and Taxation at UVA was published in the American Journal of International Law and accompanied by an online symposium organized by AJIL Unbound.
Mason lectures on tax topics around the world. She delivered the 2023 IFA Canada Lecture, on the topic of EU state aid. She also delivered the 2018 Amsterdam Distinguished Lecture in Taxation, which will be published in the Oxford Yearbook of European Law. She has been a visiting professor at several institutions, including Yale Law School, the University of Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne), the Vienna University of Economics and the Business and the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation. Mason has served as national reporter for the United States to the International Fiscal Association (IFA), and she is a member of the American Law Institute.
Mason supervises doctoral students, teaches taxation and serves as faculty adviser to UVA’s tax moot court team, which has won three international championships. She co-founded and co-hosts the Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs, an online seminar series that is open to the public and dedicated to forging ties between tax and other legal disciplines. In 2023, she was named faculty director of the Virginia Center for Tax Law.
Education
- J.D.Harvard Law School2001
- B.A.Columbia University1997