faculty focus
The Life Thomas Griffith has been teaching for almost as long as he can remember. Now, after more than three
Thomas Griffith’s passion for helping students excel in law school earned him recognition for his support.
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USCLaw magazine
USC Gould celebrates Thomas Griffith, John B. Milliken Professor of Taxation, for more than 30 years of leadership and commitment to students
decades as a professor at USC Gould School of Law, he is stepping out of the classroom to pursue a new life chapter: retirement. An award-winning professor who facilitated the school’s academic support program, Griffith has enjoyed helping students from all walks of life realize their potential to succeed in law school. “I feel, for many students, taking academic support courses allowed them to demonstrate the understanding of law they already had,” he says. “It wasn’t that I was teaching them things they didn’t know, but teaching them how to successfully transfer what they knew to a successful exam essay.” Griffith realized teaching was his calling when, as a high school student, he helped teach his grandmother’s summer school classes. After graduating from Brown University he took a teaching job at a high school in Connecticut, and after seven years he decided to give something new a try: law school. He enrolled at Harvard University the following year, his sights set on becoming a law professor. For all three years of law school, he found time to teach — as a teaching assistant for undergraduates and as a legal writing instructor. After graduating he accepted an associate position at Hill & Barlow in Boston, Mass., before joining the USC Gould faculty in 1984. At Gould, Griffith specialized in income tax and criminal law and taught courses in contracts, corporate taxation, criminal law, criminal procedure and federal income taxation. His early research focused on tax law through a lens of social justice. Reflecting USC’s spirit of interdisciplinary scholarship, he wove insights from moral philosophy into tax law — “which was not prominent before he brought it here,” says Scott Altman, Virginia S. and Fred H. Bice Professor of Law. Griffith’s published works include explorations of racial and socioeconomic bias in the criminal justice system, and happiness as a gauge for the optimal level of income redistribution.
