Ajay Mehrotra
- Associate Professor, School of Law
- Adjunct Professor, Department of History
Education
- B.A. at University of Michigan, 1991
- M.A. at Georgetown University, 1994
- Ph.D. at University of Chicago, 2003
Contact Information
|
| Law School, Rm. 261 |
| (812) 855-7443 |
| law.indiana.edu/directory/amehrotr.asp |
Background
As a legal scholar and historian, I am generally interested in the development of American law and political economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More specifically, my research focuses on the changing structure of American public finance at both the national and state level during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. I am currently working on a book, tentatively titled Sharing the Burden: Law, Politics and the Making of the Modern American Fiscal State, 1880-1930, which investigates the historical forces that led to the creation of new fiscal order in the early decades of the twentieth century. I am also co-editing a collection of essays that analyzes the historical and comparative dimensions of fiscal sociology. I regularly teach an interdisciplinary, graduate American legal history seminar, concentrating on the legal foundations of modern American capitalism.
Selected Awards
- Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2006-2007
- National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, 2006-2007
- Trustees Teaching Award, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington, 2004-2005
- American Bar Foundation, Doctoral Fellowship, 2001-2003
- American Historical Association, Littleton-Griswold Research Grant (2002)
Research Interests
- U.S. legal, political, economic history
Courses Recently Taught
Publication Highlights
Books
• The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective (co-edited with Isaac William Martin and Monica Prasad) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
• Sharing the Burden: Law, Politics and the Making of the Modern American Fiscal State (in progress)
Articles and Book Chapters
• “The Public Control of Corporate Power: Revisiting the 1909 U.S. Corporate Tax from a Comparative Perspective,” Theoretical Inquiries in Law (forthcoming).
• “Lawyers, Guns & Public Monies: The U.S. Treasury, World War One, and the Administration of the Modern Fiscal State,” Law & History Review (forthcoming)
• “The Thunder of History: The Origins and Development of the New Fiscal Sociology” (with Isaac William Martin and Monica Prasad) introductory chapter in The New Fiscal Sociology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1-28
• “The Intellectual Foundations of the Modern American Fiscal State,” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (Spring 2009), 53-62.
• “Forging Fiscal Reform: Constitutional Change, Public Policy, and the Creation of Administrative Capacity in Wisconsin, 1880-1920” Journal of Policy History 20:1 (Winter 2008), 94-112 (Special issue on “The Constitution and Public Policy in U.S History,” eds. Julian Zelizer and Bruce Schulman).
