Blum, Walter J.

Walter J. Blum (1918-1994) completed the majority of his education with the University of Chicago. Having attended the University’s Lab School, he went on to receive both his A.B. (1939) and J.D.(1941) from the University of Chicago and its Law School. He left the University only briefly upon graduation, taking a two-year position with the Office of Price Administration and then serving in the military. He returned to the Law School in 1946 to take up the post of Assistant Professor and remained there for the entirety of his academic career. He became a full Professor in 1953 and was named the Wilson-Dickinson Professor in 1975. He was named the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor in 1985. Three years later, he became Professor Emeritus and continued to teach at the Law School until shortly before his death.

As an expert in tax law, bankruptcy, insurance, and corporate reorganization, Blum acted as a consultant to several institutions of the United States government: the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Transportation, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Administrative Conference of the States. In addition to his various public posts, Blum served as a consultant to the American Law Institute’s Federal Income Tax Project and as legal counsel to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

As a legal scholar, Blum published several important works. The seminal The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation, which he co-authored with Harry Kalven, appeared in 1953 and is still widely considered to be the most incisive critique of income taxation in the field of tax policy. Blum’s other works include Public Law Perspectives on a Private Law Problem (1965), also with Harry Kalven, as well as the highly influential casebooks Materials on Reorganization, Recapitalization and Insolvency (1968) and Corporate Readjustments and Reorganization (1976), both co-authored with Stanley Kaplan.

Blum was very active in the administration of the University of Chicago and participated in a variety of administrative projects, from the planning of undergraduate life on campus to the construction of the Law School building.

Blum died in Chicago in 1994 and was survived by his two daughters Wendy Blum Coggins of Minneapolis and Catherine Ann Scott of Burney, California. His wife, Natalie, died in 1987.