Today on TheRacetotheBottom blog, Prof. J. Robert Brown Jr. of the University of Denver Law School took a playful poke at the Association of American Law Schools for its recent announcement (still on its website here) that SEC Chair Mary Jo White will be the inaugural speaker for its Showcase Speaker series. The AALS touted Chair White as "the only woman to hold the top position in the more than 200-year history of the SEC." (Screenshot for posterity).

 

In a post today entitled "The SEC and the Unexpected Role of the Founding Fathers," Prof. Brown wondered whether Mary Schapiro and Elisse Walters would be surprised to learn that White was the first woman SEC Chairman. Prof. Brown also did the math to conclude that a "200-year-old" SEC would have been created in 1814, or "smack in the midst of the War of 1812." In fact, Prof. Brown asserted, "the founding father of the SEC is Franklin Roosevelt (the agency was created in 1934) not James Madison.  The AALS notwithstanding, the SEC cannot tie its roots to the heroes of the Revolutionary War period." I guess Prof. Brown and the AALS will just have to agree to disagree here.

 

It is pretty clear that the AALS announcement is simply a misreading of Chair White's bio rather than an alternate version of SEC and U.S. history, Still, this is an amusing catch by Prof. Brown.