Elizabeth Garrett Vice President for Academic Planning and Budget

Elizabeth Garrett was appointed vice president for academic planning and budget in June 2006. She is the Frances R. and John J. Duggan Professor in the USC Gould School of Law, and director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law.

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. Then-president George W. Bush appointed her to serve on the nine-member bipartisan Tax Reform Panel in 2005. Her primary scholarly interests are in cross-disciplinary curriculum development, legislative process, direct democracy, the federal budget process, study of democratic institutions, statutory interpretation and tax policy.

Garrett’s primary faculty appointment is in the USC Gould School of Law, and she has joint appointments with the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the School of Policy, Planning, and Development as well as a courtesy appointment with the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. She previously served as vice provost for academic affairs.

Before joining the USC faculty, she was a professor of law at the University of Chicago, where she also served as deputy dean for academic affairs, and 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. Before entering academics, she clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court.