Professor of Law Emeritus and Dean's Distinguished Scholar for the Profession Emeritus Elliott Manning died Sunday, September 10 at 88.
"All of us who had the privilege of being Professor Manning’s colleagues have a profound sense of loss and a deep sense of gratitude for his many contributions to tax teaching and tax scholarship at Miami Law," said Frances Hill, Dean's Distinguished Scholar for the Profession. “He built the Graduate Tax Program into a position of national prominence. He worked with students who found in his classes their life’s work as leading tax lawyers.
“He was a wonderful colleague who recruited a substantial share of the current faculty and kept a watchful eye on our progress toward tenure, all of which did not seem to interfere with his commitment to following current developments in tax law. He gave the Miami Law School his best and made all of us better for it. Thank you, Elliott. We will always be grateful for your extraordinary contributions, and we will never forget how you made all of us better," Hill said.
Having never been farther north than Virginia Beach, the Atlanta-born Manning left his home and his family in 1951 to start his freshman year at Columbia College in New York City. Manning later completed his juris doctor at Harvard Law School in 1958 and became an expert in tax law.
Before joining the University of Miami School of Law faculty in 1980, Manning was a senior partner in the New York firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP and had yet to consider an academic career. "But I took a sabbatical and taught for a semester at Stanford University," he said in a 2014 interview. "I found I liked teaching, and when the University of Miami needed someone to run the Graduate Program in Taxation, my wife and I came here."
During his time at UM, Manning was the former director of the Graduate Program in Taxation and the Graduate Program in Real Property Development (now Robert Traurig-Greenberg Traurig LL.M. in Real Property Development).
He was a practice consultant from 1985 to 2001 for the Miami law firm of Thomson Muraro Razook & Hart P.A. He was also a member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel, and the American Bar Association and its Tax and Business Law sections. He published several Tax Management Portfolios relating to partnership taxation, co-authored two volumes in the Lexis-Nexis Graduate Tax Series, and published articles dealing with partnership taxation and other tax subjects.
"I am extremely sad to hear of Professor Manning's passing," wrote Dana Trier, the interim director for Miami Law's Graduate Program in Taxation and the Graduate Program in Taxation of Cross-Border Investments, on social media. "He was actually an outstanding tax lawyer at Cleary before he went into teaching. He then was an outstanding contributor to the academic side of tax law after he started teaching at Miami and a helpful colleague to me when I started teaching."
Manning is survived by Gail, his wife of 64 years; his children Evan and wife Laura, Tom and wife Deb, and Shari and wife Donna, his grandchildren Jeff, Emma, and Ren; and his sister-in-law Judy Washor. Donations in memory of Manning may be made to the University of Miami School of Law.
There will be a memorial service for Manning on Tuesday, September 19, at noon at the Palace in Coral Gables, 1 Andalusia Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida.
