From academia to the SEC

On Tuesday, President Obama tapped two from Washington-D.C.-area universities to fill open seats on the Securities and Exchange Commission: Professor Lisa Fairfax of the George Washington University Law School and Hester Peirce, Director of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Professor Fairfax is a Democratic nominee, and Peirce is a Republican (and a former staffer on the Senate Banking Committee).

Senator Elizabeth Warren's support for Professor Fairfax raised eyebrows at the Wall Street Journal. Professor Bainbridge, on the other hand, thinks Professor Fairfax is a worthy nominee, despite the Warren announcement. Writes Bainbridge (who is anything but a liberal):

She's a great person, a thoughtful and insightful scholar, with sound judgment. As such, I'm setting aside my presumption that anything Liz Warren supports is per se a bad idea. After all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I expect Lisa to be open minded and not the sort of knee-jerk partisan that some SEC members (on both sides) have been lately.