Jacob H. Stillman

JACOB H. STILLMAN - 2014

ASECA is proud to announce that Jacob H. Stillman, Solicitor of the SEC has been selected as the twenty-second recipient of the William O. Douglas Award. The Douglas Award, first awarded by ASECA in 1992, is conferred annually on an SEC alumnus or alumna who has contributed to the development of the federal securities laws or served the financial and SEC community with distinction, or to a current SEC employee whose length of service and performance have been exemplary. The selection of Mr. Stillman recognizes his long and distinguished service to the Commission, beginning in 1962.

Mr. Stillman has served as the Commission’s Solicitor since 1999. As Solicitor, Mr. Stillman oversees Commission appellate litigation and its amicus curiae program. He is also responsible for overseeing the Commission’s participation on behalf of investors in bankruptcy cases. In these capacities, he is the manager of the Commission’s appellate litigation group and has personally mentored scores of attorneys, teaching them the fine art of drafting a legal brief.

Mr. Stillman has been a central figure in the development of the securities laws over the past fifty years. His knowledge of the securities laws is legendary. He has participated for many years in most major SEC appellate cases and, through the amicus program, numerous significant private appellate cases. Mr. Stillman has personally argued numerous cases in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has been instrumental in crafting and articulating legal theories that are now embodied in the jurisprudence of securities regulation.

Before joining the SEC staff, Mr. Stillman clerked for Judge Harry E. Kalodner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and served as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army. Mr. Stillman graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1958. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Texas.