Robert Sitkoff


Robert H. Sitkoff is the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is the only faculty member specializing in trusts and estates. He previously served as professor of law at New York University School of Law and Northwestern University School of Law, where he joined at age 26, the youngest on the faculty.
Sitkoff's scholarly work focuses on trusts and estates, a field of law with relatively few prominent scholars. He is co-author of Wills, Trusts, and Estates, the leading trusts and estates casebook in the United States; has published in leading academic journals such as the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, and the Journal of Law and Economics; has appeared as a commentator on CNN; and has had his work on the effects of the abolition of the rule against perpetuities featured in the Wall Street Journal.
Former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan has said that Sitkoff is the "future of the field," and that "Rob Sitkoff is doing the most exciting and important academic work in trust and estates that anyone has seen in years." Sitkoff has received three distinguished teaching awards. Sitkoff was named an "up and coming" lawyer for 2007 by Lawyer's Weekly.

Education and Clerkship

Sitkoff received a B.A. from University of Virginia and a J.D. from University of Chicago Law School with high honors. He was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Law Reform Work

Sitkoff was elected to the American Law Institute in 2007 and was elected to a five-year term on the ALI's Council in May 2012. He has worked on several ALI projects, including Principles of the Law of Charitable Nonprofit Organizations; Restatement Third, Property, Restatement Third, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment, and Restatement Third, Trusts.

Personal

His father is a retired trusts and estates lawyer. He married his wife Tamara in 2003 with their rabbi and Judge Richard Posner jointly officiating. The two of them have three children, two girls and boy.