Professor Leandra Lederman is the William W. Oliver Chair Emerita in Tax Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and Chair of Maurer's Academic Careers Initiative. She has been ranked as one of the 10 most frequently cited U.S. tax scholars in 5 consecutive Brian Leiter Law School Reports. She is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. She was a Fulbright scholar in 2019, hosted by the University of Luxembourg.
Lederman has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Texas School of Law. Before joining the Indiana faculty in 2004, she was a Professor of Law at George Mason Law School. Every fall from 2011-2023, Professor Lederman has taught a short course in U.S. Tax Law as a visiting professor at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
Professor Lederman is an award-winning scholar and teacher. Among other awards, in 2019, Professor Lederman was awarded the Tracy M. Sonneborn Award by Indiana University. This award is given to "an exemplary researcher who is also well known as an exemplary teacher." In both 2023 and 2009, Lederman received a Trustees' Teaching Award from Indiana University Maurer School of Law. In 2012, she received the Leon H. Wallace Teaching Award, which is the Maurer Law School's highest teaching honor.
Professor Lederman has written numerous articles on policy issues in the areas of federal income tax (individual and corporate), tax administration (including several articles on tax compliance and evasion), and tax controversies (including a line of research on the U.S. Tax Court). Her work has included empirical analyses and a law-and-economics approach to tax issues. Most of her articles are available for download on her SSRN Author Page.
Lederman received an A.B. degree cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1987, with honors in her major of Romance Languages (French and Spanish). In 1990, she earned her J.D. cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was a Note and Comment Editor of the N.Y.U. Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. She subsequently earned her LL.M. in taxation from N.Y.U., where she was a student editor of the Tax Law Review. Prof. Lederman was an associate at White & Case in New York City and clerked for Judge David Laro of the U.S. Tax Court in Washington, D.C. She speaks French and Spanish and is currently studying German.
Contact Info
Indiana University
Maurer School of Law
211 S. Indiana Ave.
Bloomington, IN 47405
(812) 855-6149 (voicemail)
(812) 855-0555 (fax)
llederma@iu.edu