Dollars and Sense: Understanding the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Role in Education and Housing
State Courts Project
State Courts Project
The State of New Jersey has experienced increasing economic difficulties in recent years. Its state and local tax burden is the highest in the nation, totaling 11.8% of the average taxpayer’s income, and the Tax Foundation ranked New Jersey’s business tax climate as the most inhospitable in the nation in 2009. The state’s economic growth in terms of real GDP has stagnated.
Deteriorating economic conditions in the state may have caused New Jersey to begin losing two of its most important assets: its businesses and its residents. According to a Rutgers University study, between 2002 and 2006, the state lost 231,565 people. This decrease in population resulted in a cumulative income loss of $7.9 billion between 2000 and 2005. According to other surveys, only ten percent of New Jerseyans were satisfied with the way their state and local governments operated in 2008, and forty-nine percent of residents expressed a desire to leave the state in 2007. Twenty-eight percent of residents wishing to move cited high property taxes as their most pressing concern.
Professor of Law and Rouse Chairholder, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor Miller holds an Allison and Dorothy Rouse Chair in Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School. An elected member of the American Law Institute and a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute, Professor Miller is also a Fellow and the Co-Director of the Program on Organizations, Business and Markets at the Classical Liberal Institute at the New York University Law School, an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and an Affiliated Scholar at the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding. Prior to joining George Mason University in 2025, Professor Miller was the F. Arnold Daum Chair in Corporate Finance and Law and a Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, where he had also served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development.
Professor Miller’s research concerns corporate and securities law, the economic analysis of law, and the philosophy of law. He is particularly interested in applying economic concepts and methods to understand provisions in contracts between sophisticated commercial parties. He has written on material adverse effect clauses under Delaware law, the fiduciary duties of corporate directors, director oversight liability, the history and development of Delaware corporate law, and much more. His articles and working papers are available on his SSRN page.
Professor Miller has been cited by federal and state courts in the United States, including the Delaware Supreme Court and the Delaware Court of Chancery, as well as by the Commercial Court of the United Kingdom and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) in Canada. Additionally, he is a member of the Committee on Mergers, Acquisitions & Corporate Control Contests and a former chair of the Corporation Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.
Earlier in his career, Professor Miller was a Professor of Law at the Villanova University School of Law and the Associate Director of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University. He has been a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the Cardozo Law School, and an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the Columbia Law School.
Before entering academia, Professor Miller was an associate with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He earned his J.D. from the Yale Law School where he was a Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal and an Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy. He earned his M.A. and M.Phil. degrees in philosophy from Columbia University, where he held a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and a Western Civilization Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He earned his B.A. in philosophy and mathematics from Columbia College.