Jacob E. Gersen, a leading expert in administrative law, legislation and constitutional theory, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured Professor of Law this summer. He is currently on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches environmental law, administrative law, legislation, executive branch design and torts.
Announcing the appointment, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow said: “I admire Jake Gersen’s scholarly rigor, imagination, and commitment to grounding theory in facts. A gifted political scientist as well as lawyer, he has investigated the optimal timing of legislative action, timing and deadlines within administrative agencies, the potential effects of dividing government functions in new ways, patterns in business litigation, and he is hard at work on studies of spending and political control of government. A superb collaborator and teacher, Jake is terrific and the entire Harvard community will benefit greatly from his engaging presence here.”
Gersen, who joined the Chicago faculty in 2005 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Professor of Law in 2010, also served as HLS’s Samuel Williston Visiting Assistant Professor of Law in 2009, and Northwestern University School of Law’s Searle Visiting Fellow in 2007. 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.
“Harvard Law School occupies a special place in American legal education and I am honored and elated to join this intellectual community,” Gersen said. “The diversity and quality of Harvard’s faculty and students is unmatched and I feel immensely fortunate to become a part of such a vibrant institution.”
Gersen’s most recent scholarship includes a chapter on “Designing Agencies,” in the Research Handbook in Public Law and Public Choice (Farber & O’Connell, eds., 2010). He has written and co-written articles in the Virginia, University of Chicago, Stanford, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Harvard law reviews, including collaborations with HLS Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 and Chicago Law Professor Eric A. Posner ’91. Gersen also serves as a referee for the journals of Law & Economics, Politics, Political Philosophy, Legal Studies, and the American Journal of Political Science.
He is currently researching articles on agency spending and political control of the bureaucracy; the implications of election timing for public policy; and administrative law of money.
Prior to teaching, he clerked for the Hon. Stephen F. Williams 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.