Former Supreme Court Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Douglas may not yet be spinning in his grave, but his eternal rest may be getting a bit fitful. Douglas, revered at both the SEC and in the federal court system, is seeing one part of his legacy destroy the other.
For years, Douglas’ simple mission statement for the SEC—“We are the investors advocate”—has hung in a place of honor on the wall near the chairman’s office. Generations of SEC chairmen who followed him adopted it as their own. Indeed, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt used to repeat it so often that it seemed his mantra. Mary Schapiro, the last chairman, taped an updated, homemade version to a wall in her office so that staff making a proposal had to read and answer her interrogatory version: “How does it help investors?”
