Robert J. Jackson, Jr. is planning to leave his post as a Securities and Exchange Commissioner later this year to return to academia, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Jackson, whose terms expires in June 2019, reportedly is expected to rejoin the New York University Law School for the upcoming fall semester, where he is currently on leave as a professor of law. Before his stint at NYU, Jackson was a professor of law at Columbia University and director of the Program on Corporate Law and Policy. Previously, he served as a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, working with Kenneth Feinberg, the Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation.
While Jackson is currently the only Democratic commissioner serving on the SEC, President Trump announced earlier this month that he intends to nominate Allison Lee to fill the seat vacated by former Democratic Commissioner Kara Stein, who left the agency at the beginning of the year. Like Stein, Jackson does have the option to continue serving for another 18 months after his term expires in June, but based on the Journal report, it appears that he will be departing much sooner than originally anticipated.
Depending on how quickly Lee’s nomination is taken up by the Senate, the SEC could be temporarily back at full force with five commissioners – three Republicans (Chairman Jay Clayton, Hester Peirce and Elad Roisman) and two Democrats (Robert Jackson, Jr. and Allison Lee) – or it could be back to a 3-to-1 ratio.
