USC Law Professor Elizabeth Garrett has been named a 2007 College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumna by the University of Oklahoma.
Garrett is the university vice president for academic planning and budget and holds the Sydney M. Irmas Chair in public interest law, legal ethics, political science and policy, planning and development. She was honored for her contributions to the social sciences during a dinner held at OU on Feb. 23.
“A College of Arts and Sciences is the heart of any research university,” Garrett said. “For undergraduate students, this is the place where they receive some amount of liberal arts training through the core curriculum. For those like me who choose to major in the humanities or social sciences, it provides an opportunity to spend at least four years immersed generally in the liberal arts before turning their attention to a profession or more focused graduate study.
“This ability to spend the undergraduate years acquiring a breadth of knowledge and honing critical thinking skills through courses in history, English, philosophy, economics, and the like is, in my view, one of the strengths of the system of higher education in the United States.”
In addition to receiving this distinction, Garrett presented a public lecture at OU called “The Politics of Advice: Substance, Structure and Sunshine” on Feb. 22. The lecture focused on Garrett’s work on President George W. Bush’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform and drew conclusions about the work of advisory panels in general.
Garrett received her B.A. in history from OU in 1985, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with special distinction. She was also active in student government, serving as the Chair of the Student Congress for two years. Garrett attended the University of Virginia Law School and clerked for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and for Judge Stephen Williams, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Before joining USC Law in 2003, Garrett was a professor and deputy dean at the University of Chicago Law School and 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.
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