Welcome
Bruce Wolk
Contact Information
bawolk@ucdavis.edu
530-752-3343
Rm. 2107 King Hall
Education
- B.S. Mathematics, Antioch College 1968
- M.S. Physics, Stanford University 1972
- J.D., Harvard University 1975
Professor of Law Emeritus
To the classical philosophers who glorified mathematical truths over worldly experience, Bruce Wolk would be persona non grata. Well on his way to a career in physics, Wolk switched to the legal profession.
Full Biography...Says Wolk, "There's a certain aesthetic pleasure in the beauties of mathematics and physics. There's very little beautiful in law. But it came to the point where I began to see my physics and math as very abstract and not allowing me to use my understanding of history and society and people in general. I felt too disconnected from the world."
Death and taxes may not be beautiful, but they're as certain as the world can offer. It's to these this Fulbright scholar turned, specializing in Federal income taxation, estate and gift taxation, and pension and employee benefit law. Pension and Employee Benefit Law, a casebook Wolk co-authored with Professor John Langbein of Yale, is the leading casebook in this burgeoning field.
That's not to say Einstein is forgotten. "On one occasion I was talking about the Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax, the application of which can depend on one's relative age to the transferor," Wolk said. "I made the point that if you're 25 years younger than a person, you'll always be 25 years younger. Then I remembered that isn't true. I told my students, 'If you travel on a rocketship at a very high speed, time slows down …' "
... CloseSpecial Interests
Pension And Employee Benefits (Including Erisa)Selected Career Highlights
- Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, Munich, Germany, 1985-86
- co-author (with Langbein) of Pension and Employee Benefit Law
- member of the American Law Institute; Dean of the Law School 1993-1998
Selected Publications
- Pension and Employee Benefit Law, 3d ed. (Foundation Press, 2000) (with J. Langbein)
- Pension and Employee Benefit Statutes and Regulations: Selected Sections, (Foundation Press, 2005)
- Teacher's Manual for Pension and Employee Benefit Law, 3d ed. (2000)
- Pension and Employee Benefit Law, 2d ed. (Foundation Press, 1995) (with J. Langbein)
More Publications...- Teacher's Manual for Pension and Employee Benefit Law, 2d ed. (1995)
- Pension and Employee Benefit Law, (Foundation Press, 1990) (with J. Langbein)
- Teacher's Manual for Pension and Employee Benefit Law, 1990
- Annual Supplements to Pension and Employee Benefit Law, 1990
- The Golden Parachute Provisions: Time for Repeal?, 21 Va. Tax Rev. 125 (2001)
- The Minimum Distribution Rules and Their Critical Role in Controlling the Floodgates of Qualified Plan Wealth, 2000 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 587 (2000)
- Pensions and Passivity: A Comment, 56 Law & Contemp. Probs. 141 (1993)
- Nondiscrimination in Contributions and Benefits: The New Regulations, 25 Ga. L. Rev. 71 (1990)
- Taxation of Unfunded Deferred Compensation: A Comparison of the Federal Republic of Germany and the U.S. Systems, 6 Int'l Tax & Bus. Law. 1 (1988)
- The New Excise and Estate Taxes on Excess Retirement Plan Distributions and Accumulations, 9 U. Fla. L. Rev. 987 (1987)
- Discrimination Rules for Qualified Retirement Plans: Good Intentions Confront Economic Reality, 0 Va. L. Rev. 419 (1984)
- The Pure Death Benefit: An Estate and Gift Tax Anomaly, 66 Minn. L. Rev. 229 (1982)
- Federal Tax Consequences of Wealth Transfers Between Unmarried Cohabitants, 27 UCLA L. Rev. 1240 (1980)
