Howell E. Jackson
James S. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law

Howell Jackson is the James S. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research interests include financial regulation, consumer protection, international finance, and federal budget policy. Professor Jackson has served as a consultant to the United States Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. He also frequently consults with government agencies and congressional committees on issues related to financial regulation. From 2013 to 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Professor Jackson is the editor of the SSRN Regulation of Financial Institutions eJournal, a senior editor for the Cambridge University Press Series on International Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, and trustee of College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF) and affiliated TIAA-CREF investment companies. He is also a director of Commonwealth, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening financial opportunities for low and moderate-income consumers. Professor Jackson has co-authored three books—Financial Regulation: Law and Policy (Foundation Press, 2016; Third Edition, 2021), Analytical Methods for Lawyers (Foundation Press, 2003; Third Edition, 2017), and Regulation of Financial Institutions (West, 1999)—and written numerous scholarly articles. He is co-editor of Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2008). At Harvard University, Professor Jackson has served as Senior Adviser to the President and Acting Dean of Harvard Law School. Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 1989, Professor Jackson was a law clerk for Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law in Washington, D.C. Professor Jackson received his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University in 1982 and a B.A. from Brown University in 1976.
Clerkships
- Judge Jon O. Newman, Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1982 - 1983
- Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, United States Supreme Court, 1983 - 1984
Board Memberships
- Trustee, CREF and Affiliated TIAA-CREF Mutual Funds (2005 - 2022)
- Director, Commonwealth (2008 - Present)
Representative Publications
-
Favorite
Michael S. Barr, Howell E. Jackson & Margaret E. Tahyar, Financial Regulation: Law and Policy (Found. Press 2016). -
Favorite
Howell E. Jackson, Substituted Compliance: The Emergence, Challenges, and Evolutions of a New Regulatory Paradigm, 1 J. Fin. Reg. 169 (2015). -
Favorite
Howell E. Jackson & Jeffery Y. Zhang, Private and Public Enforcement in Securities Regulation, in The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Law and Governance (Jeffrey Gordon & Wolf-Georg Ringe eds., 2015). - Howell jackson & Timothy Massad, The Treasury Option: How the U.S. Can Achieve the Financial Inclusion Benefits of a CBDC Now, Brookings (Mar. 10, 2022).
- Timothy G. Massad & Howell E. Jackson, How to Improve Regulation of Crypto Today—Without Congressional Action—and Make the Industry Pay for It (Hutchins Ctr., Working Paper No. 79, 2022).