About
The mission of the Anti-Monopoly Law, Policy, & Enforcement program is to develop and promote law and policy designed to structure markets and corporate behaviors in ways that ensure a fair and equitable distribution of opportunity, wealth, and power within our society. Our work is founded on the recognition that every marketplace and corporation is a product of rules. Accordingly, the question facing Congress, state legislators, and other policymakers is whether those rules are designed to promote the interests of the citizen – as a worker, entrepreneur, farmer, or consumer – or solely the interests of the financier and CEO.
We advance our philosophy by writing articles and books, engaging in public debate, and by filing amicus briefs in the Supreme Court, federal courts of appeals, and state courts. Our team also keeps close watch over the actions and comments of federal and state antitrust agencies and other regulators, in the United States and Europe, and engages directly with law enforcers through comments, petitions, and direct interaction. Our team also provides technical assistance to members of Congress and state legislators on proposed bills. We routinely work with labor unions, trade associations, and other grassroots groups to help them understand how to use anti-monopoly law to protect their members from dangerous concentrations of power and control and to achieve their larger goals.
Open Markets’ legal research and advocacy has shaped the agenda and priorities of the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and multiple European agencies. It has influenced and been cited in multiple court opinions and has been the subject of intense debate within the legal and economic academies. The program has led the way in pushing for enforcement actions against dominant tech corporations, reviving a rules-based approach to competition policy, making the interests and rights of working people and entrepreneurs a central concern of antitrust, and showing the value of cooperation in economic life.
Legal director Sandeep Vaheesan echos the Biden Administration’s valuable promises to break with the neoliberal antitrust and competition policy program that has one-sidedly created benefits only for large corporations.