Law School Assistant Professor Howell E. Jackson, an expert in the regulation of financial institutions, has been appointed to a tenured position.

"I am delighted with the appointment," Jackson said yesterday. "Harvard Law School is a wonderful place to teach and undertake legal research."

Jackson currently teaches courses in financial law, securities regulation and the federal budgetary process.

"In my courses, I try to provide a link between theory and practice," he said.

Jackson drew high praise from Dean of the Law School Robert C. Clark in a statement released by the Law School yesterday.

"Howell is a superb addition to the tenured faculty," Clark said. "As a teacher of subjects like securities regulation he has made extraordinary contributions, and his writing on the regulation of financial institutions is a model of what legal scholarship should be."

But the appointment of Jackson, a white male, comes after years of controversy over the Law School's failure to hire and tenure more women and minorities. Clark has pledged to work toward greater faculty diversity.

Robert James, president of the Black Law Students Association, said although he is pleased about the recent tenure appointment of Jackson, the Law School should make a greater effort to increase faculty diversity.

"I think that more should be done about diversifying," James said. "There are still no Asian-American, Latinos, or women of color on the faculty."

Jackson graduated from Brown University with a degree in economic development, and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a J.D. from the Law School in 1982, where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Jackson said the Law School has improved since he was a student there.

"The Law School has become a richer institution in many ways," he said. "The curriculum is more multi-faceted and the student body is much more diverse than in past years. Also the faculty is expanding in size to improve the student to faculty ratio."

After graduating from Harvard Law, Jackson clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Jon O. Newman and then for late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

"Marshall was wonderfully warm, but demanding," Jackson said. "Being able to spend time with him and listen to the great cases in which he was involved was a course within itself."

Jackson began teaching part time in 1986 at American University School of Law. He said he found it more fulfilling than practicing law and became a full-time assistant professor at the Law School in 1989.

The newly tenured professor has published articles on subjects ranging from "The Expanding Obligations of Financial Holding Companies" to "Whatever Happened to Market Discipline of Banks?"

Those who have worked with Jackson said they could offer nothing but praise for the professor.

Cromwell Professor of Law Louis S.B. Loss, one of Jackson's closest colleagues, characterized Jackson's work as "first-rate."

Associate Dean of the Law School Frank E. Sander, who worked with Jackson on curriculum planning there, called Jackson "an extraordinary person, incredibly capable, and a great asset to the Law School."