President Barack Obama turned to academia last week to fill a pair of seats on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, nominating George Washington University Law School professor Lisa Fairfax and Hester Peirce, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.
Fairfax, an expert on shareholder activism who teaches contracts courses and securities law, was nominated to replace Luis Aguilar, a Democrat whose term expired in June. Peirce, director of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center, was nominated to fill the open Republican seat on the commission vacated by former Commissioner Daniel Gallagher.
