Three renowned scholars and practitioners will be joining the HLS faculty in the fall: Jacob Gersen as a professor of law, and Nancy Gertner and Stephen Shay as professors of practice.
Jacob Gersen, an administrative law, legislation and constitutional theory expert, will join the HLS faculty as a professor of law. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner and Stephen Shay, deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, were appointed as professors of practice at Harvard Law School. The professorships of practice are given to outstanding individuals whose teaching is informed by extensive expertise from the worlds of law practice, the judiciary, policy and governance.
“With the appointments of these superbly accomplished and talented individuals, we continue to strengthen the Harvard Law School faculty and the bridge between Harvard Law School and law-in-practice,” said Dean Martha Minow.
Jacob Gersen
University of Chicago Law School Professor Jacob E. Gersen has accepted an offer to join the Harvard Law School faculty with tenure. An expert in administrative law, legislation and constitutional theory, he is currently teaching environmental law, executive branch design, judicial review and torts.
Gersen, who joined the Chicago faculty in 2005 as an assistant professor, also served as HLS’s Samuel Williston Visiting Assistant Professor of Law in 2009. He has received numerous academic honors, including a research grant through Chicago’s Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State in 2007, and Chicago’s John M. Olin Prize for Outstanding Graduate in Law and Economics in 2004.
His most recent scholarship includes a chapter on “Designing Agencies: Public Choice and Public Law,” in the Research Handbook in Public Law and Public Choice (Farber and O’Connell, eds., 2010). He has written and co-written articles in leading law reviews. Gersen also has served as a referee for the journals of Law & Economics, Political Philosophy and Legal Studies.
He is currently researching articles on agency spending and political control of the bureaucracy; voters, nonvoters and the implications of election timing for public policy; and administrative law of money.
Prior to teaching, he clerked for Stephen F. Williams ’61 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Gersen holds an A.B. in public policy, magna cum laude, from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in political science and a J.D. with high honors from the University of Chicago.
Nancy Gertner
Nancy Gertner has been on the federal bench since 1994, when President Clinton appointed her to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Prior to that, she had a 20-year career as a lawyer, first at Silverglate & Gertner and later at Dwyer, Collora & Gertner, and was celebrated for her work as a criminal defense attorney and civil rights activist. She was described by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly as one of “The Most Influential Lawyers of the Past 25 Years.” She will retire from the bench in September.
While serving on the federal bench, Gertner taught for more than 10 years as a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, focusing on American sentencing and comparative sentencing law.
She has served on the faculty of the American Bar Association’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative and is currently a member of its advisory board.
In 2008, Gertner became the second woman—after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58—to receive the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, for her career as both a lawyer and a judge.
She will share her experiences as a trial lawyer in her upcoming memoir, “In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate.” She also co-wrote “The Law of Juries.”
Gertner is a 1967 graduate of Barnard College, and she completed her J.D. and M.A. in political science at Yale. After law school she clerked for Chief Judge Luther M. Swygert of the 7th Circuit.
Stephen Shay
Stephen Shay, a longtime practitioner of tax law, is currently deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Since joining the Treasury Department in 2009, Shay has worked to develop and oversee implementation of U.S. international tax policy. He played a significant role in the development of proposals for the FY 2011 budget, was instrumental in structuring foreign account information reporting provisions passed as part of the 2010 HIRE Act, and helped develop international tax anti-abuse proposals that were passed as part of the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act of 2010.
Shay also has served as the U.S. delegate to the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.
Previously a partner for 22 years at Ropes & Gray, he has extensive tax counseling and controversy experience advising multinational companies, private equity funds, financial institutions, global institutional investors, and foreign governments on cross-border taxation matters and transfer pricing.
While in private practice, Shay regularly published scholarly and practice articles relating to international taxation, and testified for law reform before congressional tax-writing committees.
He is a 1972 graduate of Wesleyan University, and he earned his J.D. and his M.B.A. from Columbia University in 1976.
Blum gains tenure as professor of law at Harvard
Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03 has been promoted from assistant professor to professor of law—a tenured faculty position.
A specialist in the laws of war, Blum joined the HLS faculty as a visiting assistant professor in 2005. She focuses her research on conflict management, counterterrorism operations, law of armed conflict, negotiation and public international law. She is currently visiting as a Berkowitz Fellow at New York University’s Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization.
Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03
She co-wrote, with HLS Professor Philip B. Heymann ’60, “Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists: Lessons from the War on Terrorism” (MIT Press, 2010). Their book, which rejects the argument that traditional American values embodied in domestic and international law can be ignored in any sustainable effort to keep the United States safe from terrorism, received the 2010 Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize in October.
She is also the author of “Islands of Agreement: Managing Enduring Armed Rivalries,” which was published by Harvard University Press in 2007.
Blum has published shorter works in collection, including “Cluster Munitions” in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Oxford University Press, 2010); “Explosive Remnants of War” in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Oxford University Press, 2009); and “When Not to Negotiate” in The ABA Negotiator’s Fieldbook 101 (2006).
Blum earned an LL.B. in 1995 and a B.A. in economics in 1996 from Tel Aviv University. She then joined the Israel Defense Forces, serving in the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General’s Corps.
After completion of her LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees at Harvard in 2003, Blum returned to the International Law Department of the Israel Defense Forces to lead the counterterrorism desk, and then went on to serve as strategic adviser to the National Security Council.