Stanford Law School welcomes three new assistant professors with expertise in legal history, the intersection of tax policy with behavioral economics and the empirical study of corporate and securities law.

“Rabia Belt, Jacob Goldin, and Colleen Honigsberg join a remarkable group of scholars and teachers,” said M. Elizabeth Magill, dean and Richard E. Lang Professor of Law. “Each has already made significant contributions in their fields, and all three bring an inter-disciplinary focus to their scholarship which enriches the insight they can bring to their fields of study. We know they will be excellent teachers and mentors to our students as well as great scholars. We are delighted to welcome them to Stanford Law School.”

Rabia Belt served as an academic fellow at SLS during 2015-16 and joined the faculty as an assistant professor on June 1. She is a legal historian whose fields of study are 19^th and 20^th century U.S. history, disability history, the law of democracy, the history of suffrage, African American history, American Indian history and gender history. In 2015 the American Society of Legal History named her a Kathryn T. Preyer Scholar for her paper “Ballots for Bullets? The Disenfranchisement of Civil War Veterans,” which will be published in the Stanford Law Review later this year.

A graduate of Harvard College with a B.A. in social studies, she earned Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School. She recently completed her dissertation, “Mental Disability and the Right to Vote.” Prior to coming to SLS, she was a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Jacob Goldin, who joined the Stanford Law School faculty on September 1, is a lawyer and economist whose research focuses on the application of behavioral economics to the design of taxes and other policies. His work, which has covered issues ranging from the taxation of single parents to the regulation of payday loans, has been published in leading academic journals. His newest paper, “Which Way to Nudge: Uncovering Preferences in the Behavioral Age,” appeared last October in the Yale Law Journal.

During 2015-16 he worked at the U.S. Treasury Department in the Office of Tax Policy on programs and regulations affecting low-income taxpayers. After graduating with a B.A. in economics and government from Wesleyan University, he earned a J.D. at Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in economics at Princeton University. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Colleen Honigsberg, who joined the faculty on June 1, uses a variety of econometric techniques to conduct empirical research on corporate and securities law. Her recent papers have focused on the role creditors play in investment policy, the effects of hedge fund regulation, and the relationship between legal liability and audit quality. Her research has been featured in major publications, including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and her scholarship has been published in leading academic journals.

Prior to joining the Stanford Law School (SLS) faculty, she received her Ph.D. from Columbia Business School and her J.D. from Columbia Law School. She worked as a Certified Public Accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services and for Compass Lexecon. She earned a B.S. in cognitive science from the University of California at Los Angeles.