Hayley Miller / Jim Fox Columbia Law School 212-854-2604 / 212-854-2156
TAX LAW SPECIALIST DAVID SCHIZER APPOINTED NEW DEAN OF COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL
New York, NY -- June 21, 2004 -- David M. Schizer, a 35-year-old Columbia Law School professor, has been named the 14th Dean of the School by Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger. He is the youngest dean of the nation's top law schools.
"David Schizer is a person of exceptional talent and character. Indeed, the very qualities that have made him a phenomenal teacher will make him an equally successful dean," said Bollinger, himself a 1971 graduate of the School. "Under his leadership, the Law school will continue to provide a rigorous legal education and to serve as one of the world's leading centers for legal scholarship and practice."
Schizer will succeed David W. Leebron, who has accepted an appointment as president of Rice University after a successful eight-year run as Columbia Law's dean.
"The Law School faculty conducted an exhaustive search to find a worthy successor to David Leebron," said Michael C. Dorf, chair of the law faculty's dean search committee. "David Schizer's combination of cutting-edge scholarship and extensive connections to the professional bar have earned him the respect of colleagues many years his senior."
More than perhaps any other scholar, Schizer has studied the influence of tax on corporate governance. Schizer's work has provided government officials with theoretical and technical advice about how to curtail unfairness in the taxation of investments.
Schizer was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Columbia Law graduate Hazel Gerber Schizer, '59, a family and estates lawyer, and Zevie Schizer, a securities lawyer. After receiving a B.A. and M.A. in history and a subsequent law degree from Yale, Schizer clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, '59. An interest in business and statutory analysis led him to the tax department of Davis, Polk and Wardwell in New York, where he practiced law before joining Columbia Law School in 1998.
At Columbia Law, Professor Schizer is the Wilbur H. Friedman Professor of Tax Law. He has taught federal income taxation, the taxation of financial instruments, corporate tax, and a special course on "deals." Schizer's scholarly work has appeared in prestigious law journals, and in 2002 he was awarded the School's Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
About Columbia Law School: Columbia Law School, which was officially founded in 1858, is among the very top tier of law schools in the United States, and is continuing its transition from a national leader to a global leader in legal education and scholarship.
Graduates of Columbia Law School include prominent figures in public service such as Justice Ginsburg, President of the Republic of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili, '94 LL.M., and former Prime Minister of Italy Giuliano Amato, '63. Students who became historic figures include Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, as well as U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Jay, Charles Evans Hughes, 1884, Benjamin Cardozo, 1891, Harlan Fiske Stone, 1898, and William O. Douglas, '25.
About Columbia University: Columbia University in the City of New York is one of the top academic and research institutions in the world, conducting path-breaking research in medicine, science, the arts, and the humanities. It includes three undergraduate schools, 13 graduate and professional schools, and a school of continuing education. Seventy Nobel laureates have taught or studied at Columbia. Each year, the faculty of approximately 4,000 teaches more than 23,000 students from more than 150 countries.
Over the years, Columbia has played a critically important role in New York City as an intellectual leader and as a partner to numerous institutions in the sciences, arts, and public policy. Now marking its 250th anniversary, Columbia continues to be the quintessential urban university, a vibrant and involved intellectual and social community dedicated to learning and to the advancement of knowledge.
David M. Schizer Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law Columbia Law School
David M. Schizer, a nationally-recognized tax and corporate governance scholar, was appointed as the 14th Dean of Columbia Law School on July 1, 2004.
At 35, Schizer is the youngest Dean of the country's top law schools. His parents are also lawyers, and his mother, Hazel Gerber Schizer, was a 1959 graduate of Columbia Law.
After receiving a B.A. and an M.A. in history from Yale in 1990, and a J.D. from Yale in 1993, where he served as executive editor of the Yale Law Journal, Professor Schizer clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, from 1993-94, and then for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg '59 from 1994-95.
He went on to specialize in tax law at Davis Polk & Wardwell until 1998, when he joined the Columbia faculty. His work as a practicing attorney and as an academic has focused on the taxation of sophisticated commercial transactions, including complex derivative securities. Professor Schizer's articles aim to help the government curtail wasteful tax planning, and also explore the influence of tax on corporate governance and capital markets. He has pursued these themes in various articles, including "Balance in the Taxation of Financial Instruments: An Agenda for Reform," Columbia Law Review; "Scrubbing the Wash Sale Rules," Taxes; "Market Bubbles and Wasteful Avoidance: Tax and Regulatory Constraints on Short Sales," Tax Law Review (with Michael Powers and Martin Shubik); "Understanding Venture Capital Structure: A Tax Explanation for Convertible Preferred Securities," Harvard
Law Review (with Prof. Ronald Gilson; 2003); "Frictions and Tax-Motivated Hedging: An Empirical Exploration of Publicly-Traded Exchangeable Securities," (with Prof. William Gentry) National Tax Journal; "Frictions as a Constraint on Tax Planning," Columbia Law Review (2001); "Tax Constraints on Indexed Options," University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2001); "Sticks and Snakes: Derivatives and Curtailing Aggressive Tax Planning," Southern
California Law Review (2000); "Executives and Hedging: The Fragile Legal Foundation of Incentive Compatibility," Columbia Law Review (2000); and "Realization as Subsidy," New York University Law Review (1998).
At Columbia, Professor Schizer has taught federal income taxation, the taxation of financial instruments, corporate tax, and deals. He chaired Columbia's clerkship committee from 2000-2002, and has just joined the school's appointments committee as co-chair for entry-level candidates. He also serves on the executive committee of the N.Y. State Bar Association's Tax Section, and is a member of the Tax Club and the Tax Forum.
He is married to Meredith Wolf Schizer, and has two children.
