Professor Ruth Mason

Ruth Mason joined the University of Virginia School of Law faculty in 2013. Her research focuses on taxation, especially issues related to cross-border taxation — including citizenship-based taxation and taxation within federations and common markets. Her recent work considers multilateral efforts to reform corporate taxation. Mason has an abiding interest in the dormant commerce clause and tax discrimination, and her work in this area has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mason has been a visiting professor at Yale Law School and Université Paris 1 (Panthéon Sorbonne). She was a Fulbright senior scholar at Vienna University of Economics and Business. As professor-in-residence at the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation in 2018, Mason delivered the 2018 Amsterdam Distinguished Lecture in Taxation. Her lecture focused on the application to U.S. multinational companies of the EU prohibition of tax state aid. She developed the lecture into a method that regulators could use to reliably identify subsidies delivered as tax breaks.

Mason co-edits Kluwer’s Series on International Taxation, and she is a member of the editorial board of the World Tax Journal. She also has served as national reporter for the United States to the International Fiscal Association. Prior to joining the Law School, Mason taught at New York University School of Law and University of Connecticut School of Law. She practiced at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York City.