Harvard Law School Professor Robert Sitkoff was recently appointed to serve on the Uniform Law Commission by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Sitkoff is one of three commissioners representing the state.
Now in its 117th year, the ULC is a national law group headquartered in Chicago that is comprised of more than 300 practicing attorneys, judges, law professors, legislators and other state officials appointed by each state. Its goal is to draft and promote enactment of uniform laws that are designed to solve problems common to all the states.
Since its inception in 1892, the ULC has promulgated more than 200 uniform acts, among them such bulwarks of state statutory law as the Uniform Commercial Code, the Uniform Probate Code, the Uniform Partnership Act, the Uniform Securities Act, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, and the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act. Massachusetts is a founding member of the ULC, joining with seven other states in 1892. Since that time Massachusetts has enacted more than 70 uniform acts.
An expert in trusts and estates, a field in which the work of the ULC has had much influence, Robert H. Sitkoff is the John L. Gray Professor of Law. Prior to joining Harvard in 2007, Sitkoff was on the faculty at New York University School of Law and at Northwestern University School of Law. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Sitkoff is the co-author of “Wills, Trusts, and Estates” (Aspen 7th ed. 2005), which is the leading American casebook on trusts and estates. With Visiting Professor Max Schanzenbach, Sitkoff is currently undertaking a series of empirical studies of recent trust law reforms that will form the core of a book to be published by Yale University Press.