Alice L. Stewart

Professor Alice L. Stewart, throughout her professional career, has focused on Federal Income Tax and Federal and State Securities law.  As the Director of the Hickton Center for Community Legal Services & Clinical Legal Education and as a Clinical Professor in the Low-Income Tax Clinic, and Securities Arbitration Clinic in the University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor Stewart’s goal is to provide law students with a unique opportunity to gain practice experience, with real clients. With her clinical students, Professor Stewart has assisted hundreds of low-income tax clients through controversy and dispute with the Internal Revenue Service and has saved millions of dollars for the Clinic’s low-income taxpayers in the Pittsburgh and surrounding communities. Professor Stewart has also counseled tax and securities seminar participants through outreach programs in and around the greater Pittsburgh area and has counseled senior citizens throughout Western Pennsylvania on securities fraud and identity theft for many years. The Securities Arbitration Clinics has recovered over $500,000 in lost or stolen funds for small investors, all represented by law students and under Professor Stewart’s supervision.

Professor Stewart’s trial experience includes: United States District Court trials and hearings; Orphans Court trials and hearings on Estate matters; Pennsylvania Department of Revenue Realty Transfer Tax and Estate Tax Appeal hearings; Internal Revenue Service Appeal hearings; United States Tax Court hearings; Orphans Court adoption hearings; custody conciliation hearings; support hearings; protection from abuse hearings; contempt hearings; termination of parental rights hearings; and adoption hearings.

Professor Stewart’s appellate practice experience includes Income Tax appeals to the United States Tax Court, Estate Tax Audits and Appeals in both Federal and State Courts, and State Real Estate Transfer Tax appeals. Professor Stewart and her students filed an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on an issue of national importance. In the case of Mannella v. Commissioner of IRS, the taxpayer urged the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm the United States Tax Court’s invalidation of IRS reg. Section 1.6015-5(b)(1), which imposed a two-year time limitation for an individual to seek equitable spousal relief from a joint income tax liability under IRC section 6015(f). The U.S. Tax Court remanded the case to consider the taxpayer’s equitable tolling argument. In addition, Professor Stewart and her students also filed a brief, as Amici Curiae, to the Supreme Court of the United States in support of Petitioner Laurence Stone in Laurence Stone v Bear Stearns Co In, No 12-2827 (3rd Circuit. 2013) and a brief, as Amici Curiae, to The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in support of Appellee, General Motors, in General Motors Corporation v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania No. 12 MAP 2020 Amici is cited in the opinion at fn 21. 

Professor Stewart received her JD from the Duquesne University Kline School of Law in Pittsburgh, PA, and a B.S.B.A. in Finance and Accounting from Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, PA. She has been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Tax Court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.