Capitol Alert: Top USC professor becomes third new face at FPPC

Elizabeth Garrett, a top law professor and vice-president at the University of Southern California, was today appointed to the state's Fair Political Practices Commission.

Garrett, a vice president of budget at the USC Gould School of Law becomes the third new face to join the five-member FPPC this summer.

Garrett was selected by Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

The series of new FPPC appointments began in early June, when Lynn Montgomery, a former chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, was named a commissioner

Attorney General Jerry Brown picked Montgomery, who was a political reform consultant and one-time FPPC media director earlier in her government career.

To read our report about that appointment, click here.

The second new face came a few weeks later, when Orange law professor Ronald D. Rotunda, a Harvard Law School graduate, was appointed to the FPPC.

Rotunda was a pick made by state Controller John Chiang.

Rotunda teaches legal ethics and constitutional law at Chapman University , where he is the Doy and Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence.

To read our report about him, click here.

Seats on the commission are part-time jobs, which do not require Senate confirmation. The job pays $100 per day plus travel expenses.

All three appointees will serve on the five-member commission until 2013.

Read more of Garrett's bio after the jump.

Photo courtesy of USC media relations

Garrett is a co-director of the USC Caltech Center For the Study of Law and Politics and a professor of public interest law, political science and legal ethics.

Garrett has written and co-written extensively on campaign finance laws, courts and political parties, lobbying regulations, congressional procedures, the initiative process, and California's gubernatorial recall.

She is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and earned a doctorate at the University of Virginia and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.