Elizabeth Garrett

Helen Elizabeth Garrett, commonly known as Elizabeth Garrett or Beth Garrett (June 30, 1963 – March 6, 2016), was an American professor of law and academic administrator.

Garrett was born in Oklahoma City on June 30, 1963, to Robert and Jane Garrett.

According to her mother, Garrett began to read very early and thereafter was never seen without a book in her hand.

At age 3, according to Jane, young Garrett announced she would be a lawyer—Garrett, more modestly, claimed she was 5.

Her father, Robert, had earned a law degree, though he worked as president of a savings and loan.

An uncle and grandfather were also lawyers.

Jane's great-grandfather was the first to open a school in the Choctaw Reservation town of Lehigh, Oklahoma.

Her parents taught her and her sister Laura that when they finished a task, they should start on something else.

Garrett earned her Bachelor of Arts in history with special distinction from the University of Oklahoma in 1985.

In 1988, she received her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.

After law school, Garrett clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

She also served as a legal advisor at the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal at The Hague and as legislative director and tax and budget counsel for Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma.

Boren said about Garrett, "If I were to count on the fingers of one hand the people I’ve known with the most remarkable intellect, she would be on that list."

Garrett's primary scholarly interests included legislative process, the initiative and referendum process and the federal budget process.

Garrett was a professor of law at the University of Chicago from 1995 to 1999 and also served as deputy dean for academic affairs.

She also taught as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia Law School, Central European University in Budapest, and the Interdisciplinary Center Law School in Israel.

Garrett began her tenure at the University of Southern California in 2003 as the Frances R. and John J. Duggan Professor of Law and Vice Provost.

In a 2004 interview, David Levy, Garrett's favorite history professor at the University of Oklahoma, said that Garrett would finish the weekly quiz ahead of the other students and, in the same motion, turn over the paper and reach for next week's reading.

Levy also said of Garrett that he "never had a student who made better use of time."

As a sophomore at the University of Oklahoma, Garrett became chair of student congress, the University of Oklahoma Student Government Association, a position she held until she graduated.

In 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush appointed Garrett to serve on the nine-member bipartisan President's Advisory Panel for Federal Tax Reform.

Its report was issued later in that same year.

On March 30, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Garrett to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy in the Department of Treasury.

Garrett withdrew her nomination on May 29, 2009, citing "aspects of my personal family situation."

From 2009 to 2014, she served on the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

She also served as director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics.

Garrett also served on the boards of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at USC and on the Internet2 Board of Directors.

Between 2010 and 2015, Garrett served as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, USC's second-ranking officer under USC President C. L. Max Nikias.

As provost, she proved a superb administrator with a complex portfolio.

In addition to serving as a professor in the USC Gould School of Law, Garrett oversaw the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, as well as the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

She also hired Provost Professors and founded the Provost's Postdoctoral Scholars Program in the Humanities.

Over the course of two years, Garrett formed The USC Strategic Vision: Matching Deeds to Ambitions, which the Board of Trustees accepted in December 2011.

Among her prolific writings, she was co-author of the preeminent case book on legislation and statutory interpretation, Cases and Materials on Legislation and Regulation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy (2014).

She was also co-editor of Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy and Statutory Interpretation Stories.

Her interdisciplinary scholarship used insights from economics and political science to understand how to design democratic institutions to ensure outcomes more consistent with citizen preferences—and how those preferences might be shaped by the political and legal environments.

On September 30, 2014, Cornell University's Board of Trustees unanimously elected Garrett as the 13th president of Cornell University.

On July 1, 2015, she became the 13th president of Cornell University—the first woman to serve as president of the university.

The university's search for a president began when incumbent president David J. Skorton announced in March 2014 that he would be leaving Cornell on June 30, 2015, to become the next secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

She was selected after a six-month search in which some two hundred candidates were considered.

She died from colon cancer on March 6, 2016, the first Cornell president to die while in office.