Tax Law and Policy

The first woman to serve as the director of the Division of Enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Linda Chatman Thomsen ’79 led the Enron investigation and expanded enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. She is now a partner in Davis Polk’s litigation department.

Harvard Law Professor Hal S. Scott was in his element, thundering up and down the aisles of a classroom in Wasserstein Hall and challenging each of his 70 Capital Markets Regulation students to match his enthusiasm and curiosity. After 43 years on the HLS faculty, Scott taught his final class at the school before retiring last spring. What is the best process, he asked, for ensuring that regulations for the financial system achieve their intended effect?

Yuko Miyazaki LL.M. ’84 sets a historic precedent as a female justice on Japan’s Supreme Court

Statistics released by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) indicate that, as of the end of 2018, Harvard Law School faculty members have continued to feature prominently on SSRN’s list of the 100 most-cited law professors.

Harvard’s recent two-day conference, “Money as a Democratic Medium,” challenged its participants to re-examine the history of money in America, and to redefine its future.

The Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute awarded its 2018 investor research prize to a study by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, that examines the resources and decisions of index fund managers.

A student delegation from the Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB) visited business, legal, and government leaders in London and Brussels, Belgium, in late August, as part of HALB’s second-annual International Trek.

The Harvard Law School Library hosted a series of book talks by HLS authors, with topics including Authoritarianism in America, the Supreme Court of India, and Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict. As part of this ongoing series, faculty authors from various disciplines shared their research and discussed their recently published books with a panel of colleagues and the Harvard Law community.

During his nearly 10 years on the Harvard Law faculty, Holger Spamann S.J.D. ’09 has always enjoyed teaching corporate finance, but he’s also found it challenging. Some students have worked as traders at hedge funds or in private equity and others have been newly minted English majors who haven’t thought much about business concepts. The solution he has been exploring this year is a corporate finance course divided into four different modules, any of which students can opt out of depending on their knowledge level.

Caitlin Long ’94 left Wyoming for Harvard Law School and the career on Wall Street that followed, but she’s never forgotten her home state or its only university.

The Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB) hosted Bill Ackman, founder and chief executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management, to discuss his views on the current state of activist investing, his experience managing a multibillion dollar fund, and the impact of shareholder activism on corporate governance.

Kicking of the Harvard Association for Law & Business' seventh annual symposium on Feb. 26, a panel of top-level executives in the financial world explored the possibilities of crossing over from a legal to a financial career.

Prof. David Wilkins, vice dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession and faculty director of Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession (CLP), recently sat down to discuss CLP's project on Globalization Lawyers and Emerging Economies (GLEE) and what lies ahead for the innovative program.

In December, Amy Feinberg ’18 became the second Federal Tax Clinic student to argue an appeal in a federal circuit court since the Clinic opened at Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School in 2015.

Last month, the Program on International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School held its 20th annual U.S.-Japan symposium, along with a special anniversary gala to celebrate the milestone and look ahead to the future of the program as PIFS director Hal S. Scott transitions to a new role as emeritus professor at Harvard.

Robert H. Sitkoff, the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, chaired the drafting committee that finalized the Uniform Directed Trust Act (UDTA), which the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) approved July 19, 2017.

On January 3, 2018, the world will change, according to Professor Howell Jackson. That is the day that the second iteration of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive — a set of European Union financial regulations that emerged in the wake of 2008, known colloquially as MiFID II — will go into effect.

Tenacious legal research and petition-filing by Harvard Law School students working in the Tax Clinic of the Legal Services Center at HLS helps low-income clients fight for their legal rights – rights that are meaningless if clients lack access to a lawyer to stand up for them.

Niamh Moloney LL.M. ’93, professor of Financial Markets Law and incoming Head of the Law Department (2018-2019) at the London School of Economics, spoke at Harvard Law School on Sept. 27 on the complex question of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union and its implications for the U.K.’s financial services industry.

Harvard Law School Professor Einer Elhauge ’86 will receive the prestigious Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship from the American Anititrust Institute at their annual conference on June 21.

Keith Fogg, an expert in tax law and procedure and director of Harvard Law School’s Federal Tax Clinic at the Legal Services Center, has been named Clinical Professor of Law at HLS.