Corporate Governance

Law Professors and the Securities and Exchange Commission

By J. Robert Brown

The White House announced yesterday that Troy Paredes, a law professor from the University of Washington in St. Louis, would be appointed to the SEC in place of Paul Atkins.  For a quick overview of the articles he has written, his SSRN page is here.  He is, by the way, ranked #211 in the rankings of the top 1500 law faculty by SSRN (based upon downloads of articles/papers over the previous 12 months). 

His appointment got this Blog to thinking about the role of law professors on the Commission.  They actually have a long history of serving on the Securities and Exchange Commission, including two of the early chairmen, William O. Douglas (Yale) and James Landis (Harvard).  Bill Cary, appointed chair by Kennedy, came from academia (Columbia), as did Harold Williams, appointed by Jimmy Carter, although he was teaching in the  Graduate School of Management at the University of California.  More recent examples include Harvey Goldschmid (Columbia), Isaac Hunt (Akron), and David Ruder (Northwestern).  Chairman Cox took a year off from practice to teach at the Harvard Business School.  Others have gone on to law teaching careers, including Joe Grundfest (Stanford) and Roberta Karmel (Brooklyn).     

Full post as published by The Race to the Bottom on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).