Jennifer Taub
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Biography
Jennifer Taub is a legal scholar and advocate, devoted to making complex business law topics engaging inside and outside of the classroom. Her research and writing focuses on corporate governance, banking and financial market regulation, and white collar crime. Similarly, her advocacy centers on “follow the money” matters—promoting transparency and opposing corruption. Taub was appointed the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School during the fall 2019 semester. She was also previously a tenured professor at Vermont Law School and Western New England University School of Law.
In the area of banking and financial market regulation, Taub’s book Other People’s Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business was published in May 2014 by Yale University Press. Recognized as accessible and informative, Other People’s Houses was honored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book as one of the 2015 finalists in the nonfiction category. Other People’s Houses was favorably mentioned by Nobel Laureate, Robert Shiller, in his 2015 edition of Irrational Exuberance. An authority on the 2008 mortgage meltdown and related financial crisis, Taub is also an expert in white collar crime. Her book, Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime (Viking) was published in 2020 and was reviewed in numerous national publications include by James B. Stewart in the print edition of New York Times book review. Penguin Books published the paperback edition of Big Dirty Money in September 2021 with a new subtitle: Making White Collar Criminals Pay, and new preface and epilogue update. In addition to Big Dirty Money, she is co-author with the late Kathleen Brickey of Corporate and White Collar Crime: Cases and Materials, 6th and 7th editions (Wolters Kluwer, 2017 and 2021).
Taub’s corporate governance work often focuses on the role of institutional investors, including mutual funds. Her article “Able but Not Willing: The Failure of Mutual Fund Advisers to Advocate for Shareholders’ Rights,” published in the Journal of Corporation Law (2009) was presented at a conference jointly sponsored by the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and the Oxford Said Business School. Her article “Managers in the Middle: Seeing and Sanctioning Corporate Political Spending after Citizens United” was presented at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and later published in the NYU Journal of Legislation and Public Policy (2012). Taub’s article, “Is Hobby Lobby a Tool for Limiting Corporate Constitutional Rights,” was presented at Harvard Law School and later published in a symposium issue of Constitutional Commentary on Money, Politics, Corporations, and the Constitution (2015).
Taub’s pro bono work entails volunteering for nonprofit, non-partisan organizations on regulatory reform as well as pro bono private consultations with elected and appointed officials on pending legislation and potential rulemaking. Her more public activities have included testifying as an expert before the United States Senate Banking Committee and a United States House Financial Services Subcommittee. Taub also co-organized a conference and co-led a panel discussion at the Financial Stability Law Workshop at the U.S. Treasury Department, hosted by the Office of Financial Research.
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Degrees and Certifications
J.D., Harvard Law School
B.A. Yale University -
Selected publications
Books
- WINNING THE TAX WAR (under contract with Viking Penguin Random House).
- BIG DIRTY MONEY: THE SHOCKING INJUSTICE AND UNSEEN COST OF WHITE COLLAR CRIME (Viking Penguin Random House, 2020 hardcover, 2021 paperback).
- CORPORATE AND WHITE COLLAR CRIME: CASES AND MATERIALS, with the late Kathleen Brickey (Aspen, 6th edition 2017, 7th edition 2021).
- OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES: HOW DECADE OF BAILOUTS, CAPTIVE REGULATORS, AND TOXIC BANKERS MADE HOME MORTGAGES A THRILLING BUSINESS (Yale University Press, 2014, paperback 2015).
Scholarly articles and book chapters
- Money Talks: Expanding the False Claims Act to Combat Corporate Crime, in progress.
- FOREWORD, 43 W. New Eng. L. Rev. 1 (2022).
- New Hopes and Hazards for Social Investment Crowdfunding, chapter in LAW AND POLICY FOR A NEW ECONOMY: SUSTAINABLE, JUST, AND DEMOCRATIC (2017).
- Law and Economics: Contemporary Approaches, with Martha McCluskey and Frank Pasquale, 35 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 297 (2016).
- Film review of The Big Short and 99 Homes, New Labor Forum (2016).
- The Subprime Specter Returns: High Finance and the Growth of High-Risk Consumer Debt, New Labor Forum (2016).
- Is Hobby Lobby a Tool to Limit Corporate Constitutional Rights? 30 Const. Comment. 403 (2015).
- Regulating in the Light: Harnessing Political Entrepreneurs' Energy for Post-Crisis Sunlight Hearings, St. Thomas L. Rev. (2015).Reconcilable Differences: Promoting Homeownership While Preventing Systemic Risk, Annual Review of Insolvency Law 625 (2014).
- Reforming the Banks for Good, Dissent (2014).
- Unpopular Contracts and Why They Matter: Burying Langdell and Enlivening Students, 88 Wash. L. Rev. 1427 (2013).
- Delays, Dilutions, and Delusions: Implementing the Dodd-Frank Act, in Restoring Shared Prosperity: A Policy Agenda (AFL-CIO, the Macroeconomic Policy Institute, and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2013).
- There is No There There: Sophisticated Investors as the Guardians of Financial Stability in Unfinished Mission: Making Wall Street Work for Us (Americans for Financial Reform and Roosevelt Institute, 2013).
- Shadow Banking System; Financial Deregulation; and Financial and Banking Promotion and Regulation in the OXFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN BUSINESS, LABOR AND ECONOMIC HISTORY (Oxford University Press, 2013).
- What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Banking, in the Handbook of the Political Economy of Financial Crises (Oxford University Press, 2013).
- Money Managers in the Middle: Seeing and Sanctioning Political Spending after Citizens United, 15, N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub. Pol’y 443 (2012).
- The Sophisticated Investor and the Global Financial Crisis in CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FAILURES: THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS IN THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
- Great Expectations for the Office of Financial Research in Will it Work? How Will We Know? The Future of Financial Reform (Roosevelt Institute, 2010).
- Co-author with Ben Branch, Bankruptcy Ethics in Finance Ethics: Critical Issues in Theory and Practice (Wiley, 2010).
- Able but Not Willing: The Failure of Mutual Fund Advisers to Advocate for Shareholders’ Rights, 34 J. Corp. L. 843 (2009).
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Accomplishments
- Jennifer Taub has testified before the United States Senate Banking Committee and a United States House Financial Services Subcommittee.
- Taub served as chair of the Section on Financial Institutions and Investments of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).
- Taub was a co-founder and organizer of the April 15, 2017, Tax March where more than 120,000 people gathered in cities nationwide to demand President Donald Trump release his tax returns.
- Taub received the Vermont Law School, Women’s Law Association Phenomenal Woman Award in the faculty category.
- Taub is regular contributor to the Washington Monthly, and an occasional guest contributor to the Washington Post and the New York Times. She is often invited to appear as a guest expert on cable news programs including MSNBC’s Morning Joe, MSNBC’s Way Too Early, and CNN Newsroom. She is also a regular guest on several radio programs and hosts her own YouTube program called “Morning Jen."
- Social Science Research Network
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Recent courses taught
Fall Term 2024 (current)