About

Robert H. Sitkoff is the Austin Wakeman Scott Professor of Law and the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is an expert in wills, trusts, estates, and fiduciary administration, with a research focus on the economic and empirical analysis of trusts, estates, and fiduciary administration. His work has been published in leading scholarly journals such as the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Journal of Law and Economics, and Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Sitkoff is the coauthor of the widely used coursebook Wills, Trusts, and Estates and a coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law. He has previously taught at New York University School of Law and Northwestern University School of Law, and has received several teaching awards. In addition to his academic work, he actively participates in trusts and estates law reform, serving on various committees of the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute, and serving as an advisory consultant and expert witness in related litigation and regulatory matters. He is also involved in professional organizations, editing scholarly journals, and leading training workshops for trust officers and fiduciaries.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Business
• Finance
• Economics
• Management
• History
• Actuarial science
• Accounting

Selected publications

• University Trustees Should Say No to Divestment

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• It’s 10 PM, Do You Know Where Your Trust Is Sited?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Divesting University Endowments

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Comment Letter of Professors Max M. Schanzenbach and Robert H. Sitkoff on the Department of Labor's Proposed Rulemaking on Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• When a Statute Comes with a User Manual: Reconciling Textualism and Uniform Acts

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2021-11-06

  articleSenior author

  This Article develops an interpretive theory for statutes that originate as Uniform Acts promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission. Although overlooked in the literature on statutory interpretation, state-enacted Uniform Acts are ubiquitous. They shape our life cycles—governing marriage, parentage, divorce, and death—and structure trillions of dollars in daily commercial transactions.\nLargely focusing on textualism, today’s dominant form of statutory interpretation, we analyze the interpretive consequences of two unusual features of state-enacted Uniform Acts. First, the text of every Uniform Act directs courts to interpret it to “promote uniformity.” Second, each provision is accompanied by an official explanatory comment, analogous to a user manual for interpreters. We argue that, in light of these features, foundational textualist principles obligate courts to consider legislative intent as expressed in the official comments—what textualists would otherwise dismiss as legislative history—when they interpret a statute originating as a Uniform Act.\nMore specifically, this Article explores what we call the “directives” and “signals” that state legislatures send when they enact a Uniform Act. As enacted statutory text, the promote-uniformity clause directs courts to treat the official comments as persuasive authority on the statute’s meaning. Moreover, even if a legislature enacts only a portion of a Uniform Act, the legislature signals that courts should treat the comments as persuasive authority by virtue of the choice to incorporate language from a Uniform Act rather than some alternative text.\nMoving from theory to practice, we develop a canon of construction for interpreting this significant but under-studied species of positive law. We also present a series of puzzles and complications arising from “hybrid” enactments of bespoke and Uniform statutory language. More generally, by colliding textualist theory with the two-step political economy of state-enacted Uniform Acts, the Article broadens our understanding of textualism and adapts it to this critical but overlooked category of statute.

  Publisher

• Comment Letter of Professors Max M. Schanzenbach and Robert H. Sitkoff on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Request for Comment on the Names Rule for Mutual Finds in Light of ESG Investing and Other Market Developments

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Trust Law

  2020-11-10

  reference-entrySenior author

  This chapter identifies the principal ways in which the common law trust has been used as an instrument of private ordering in American practice. It argues that in both law and function, contemporary American trust law has divided into two distinct branches. In the chapter’s taxonomy, one branch involves <italic>donative</italic> trusts and the other involves <italic>commercial</italic> trusts. The donative branch divides further to include three separate sub-branches for <italic>revocable</italic> and <italic>irrevocable private</italic> trusts plus <italic>charitable</italic> trusts. The different branches of contemporary American trust law have distinctive functional purposes rooted in freedom of disposition for donative trusts and freedom of contract for commercial trusts. The chapter explains the logic of this branching in both practical function and doctrinal form.

  PublisherDOI

• Risk Management and the Prudent Investor Rule

  2020-11-01

  articleSenior author

  The prudent investor rule, now enacted in every state, is the centerpiece of trust investment law. In accordance with modern portfolio theory, the rule directs a trustee to implement an overall investment strategy having risk and return objectives reasonably suited to the trust. This article, recently published in Trusts & Estates magazine, summarizes the results of an earlier empirical study of the effect of the rule on asset allocation and management of market risk by bank trustees. We had two main findings. First, enactment of the rule was associated with increased stockholdings by bank trustees, but not among banks with average trust account sizes below the 25th percentile, a result that is consistent with sensitivity in asset allocation to trust risk tolerance. Second, enactment of the rule was associated with increased portfolio rebalancing by bank trustees, a result that is consistent with increased management of market risk. Given these findings, we concluded that reallocation toward additional stockholdings after enactment of the rule was correlated with trust risk tolerance and that the increased market risk exposure from those additional stockholdings was more actively managed.

• ESG Investing: Theory, Evidence, and Fiduciary Principles

  2020 · 17 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Actuarial science

  Trustees and other investment fiduciaries of pensions, charities, and personal trusts, and those who advise them, face increasing pressure to rely on ESG factors in the investment management of tens of trillions of dollars of other people’s money. At the same time, however, confusion abounds about the intersection of fiduciary principles and ESG investing. This article cuts through that confusion to provide guidance about when and how ESG investing by trustees and investment fiduciaries is permissible. We make four interrelated points: (1) we provide a clarifying taxonomy on the meaning of ESG investing, differentiating between risk-return ESG (i.e., using ESG factors to improve risk-adjusted returns) and collateral benefits ESG (i.e., using ESG factors for third-party effects); (2) we discuss the subjectivity inherent to identifying and applying ESG factors, which complicates assessment of ESG investing strategies; (3) we summarize the current theory and evidence on whether ESG investing can improve risk-adjusted returns, finding the results to be mixed and contextual; and (4) we show that American trust fiduciary law generally prohibits collateral benefits ESG, but risk-return ESG can be permissible if supported by a reasoned and documented analysis that is updated periodically.

• Trust Law: Private Ordering and the Branching of American Trust Law

  2020 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Law
  • Political Science

  In this chapter, prepared for The Oxford Handbook of New Private Law, we identify the principal ways in which the common law trust has been used as an instrument of private ordering in American practice. We argue that in both law and function, contemporary American trust law has divided into distinct branches. In our taxonomy, one branch involves donative trusts and the other commercial trusts. The donative branch divides further to include three separate sub-branches for revocable and irrevocable private trusts plus charitable trusts. We explain the logic of this branching in both practical function and doctrinal form.

Frequent coauthors

• Max M. Schanzenbach

  26 shared

• Frederic S. Schwartz

  American College of Financial Services

  9 shared

• Paula J. Dalley

  9 shared

• William P. LaPiana

  9 shared

• Arthur G. LeFrancois

  9 shared

• Richard B. Bernstein

  Princeton University

  9 shared

• Joshua C. Tate

  9 shared

• Michael O’Shea

  9 shared

Awards & honors

• American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) academi…
• International Academy of Estate and Trust Law academician
• Estate Planning Hall of Fame member