Anne Alstott, an expert on federal income taxation, corporate taxation and tax policy as well as on social welfare policy, family policy, and feminism and economic justice, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured professor, Dean Elena Kagan ’86 announced today.
Alstott is presently the Jacquin D. Bierman Professor of Taxation at Yale Law School, where she has held a tenured professorship since 1997 and the Bierman chair since 2004. At Yale, she has taught federal income taxation, corporate taxation, and subjects related to taxation and social policy. She has won three awards for outstanding teaching.
“I’m thrilled that Anne has decided to join our faculty,” said Dean Elena Kagan ’86. “She is in the very first rank of interdisciplinary legal experts on taxation and social welfare policy; her scholarship is among the most creative, thoughtful, and influential in her field. And she is a spectacular teacher, whom students will love to learn from and work with.”
Prior to joining the Yale Law School faculty, Alstott was an associate professor at Columbia University School of Law in New York (1992-1997) and before that she was an attorney-advisor in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, Office of Tax Legislative Counsel in Washington, D.C. (1990-1992). She began her legal career as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York (1987-1990).
“I’m honored and delighted to join the Harvard Law School faculty,” said Allstot. “The intellectual depth and breadth of the faculty, combined with the University’s strengths in social science and public policy, create an ideal site for studying taxation and family policy and for circulating ideas to the wider intellectual community. This is an exciting time to join Harvard Law, and I look forward to collaborating with faculty and students.”
Professor Alstott has published a number of important books and articles on taxation and social policy.
In her 2004 book “No Exit: What Parents Owe Children and What Society Owes Parents,” Alstott argues that the need to provide continuity of care to children places a burden on parents, and that society can support them in meeting their parental obligations. She calls for social policy that gives greater support to child rearing, specifically in the form of “caretaker resource accounts.” In her plan, caretaker parents of children under the age of 13 would receive $5,000 a year to use for childcare, their own education or retirement savings.
In an earlier book, “The Stakeholder Society,” Alstott and co-author Bruce Ackerman suggest a plan to address economic inequality in America by giving $80,000 to every high school-educated U.S. citizen on his or her 21st birthday (or earlier to those who go to college). The idea, say the authors, is to provide each young adult “a fair share of the nation’s resources as they accept the full responsibilities of adult life.” The authors contend this plan would promote equal opportunity and national loyalty, among other values. The book served as part of the intellectual foundation for the Child Trust Fund initiative in Britain in 2005.
Professor Alstott is a 1987 J.D. graduate of the Yale Law School, and a 1984 A.B. graduate of Georgetown University, summa cum laude.