Obama nominates Helen Garrett as Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy

[private]President Barack Obama has announced his intent to nominate Helen Elizabeth Garrett as Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy:

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 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. She also serves as chair of the finance committee of the national governing board of Common Cause. 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.[/private]