Speakers

Elizabeth Garrett
Vice President for Academic Planning & Development
Senior Administration
University of Southern California

Elizabeth Garrett specializes in the legislative process, direct democracy, the federal budget process, the study of democratic institutions, statutory interpretation and tax policy. She is an expert on state, national and presidential politics.
As vice president for academic planning and budget at USC, Professor Garrett oversees resource allocation and manages the university's academic programs and priorities.

She also is co-director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics and serves on the board of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC. In August 2009, she was appointed as one of five commissioners on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the state's independent political oversight agency. In January 2005, she was appointed to President George W. Bush's nine-member bipartisan Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, which issued its report in November 2005.

Professor Garrett graduated from the University of Oklahoma and University of Virginia Law School. She clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court and Judge Williams on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and served as legal counsel and legislative assistant for tax, budget and welfare reform issues for U.S. Senator David L. Boren. Before joining USC Law in 2003, she was a professor at University of Chicago Law School, where she also served as deputy dean for academic affairs. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Virginia Law School, Central European University in Budapest and the Interdisciplinary Center Law School in Israel.

Professor Garrett is the co-author of the fourth edition of the leading casebook on legislation and statutory interpretation, Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy (West Publishing, 2007). Her recent articles have analyzed courts and political parties, campaign finance reform laws, various congressional procedures, judicial review of regulatory statutes, and the initiative process.