Open Markets Institute Legal Director, Sandeep Vaheesan, interviews Frank Pasquale about his forthcoming book, New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI on Law and Political Economy Project.
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Legal Director, Sandeep Vaheesan, published an article in Democracy Journal highlighting how Amazon has built on it’s existing dominance as an online retailer during the COVID-19 pandemic through retaliation against worker’s yearning for better worker conditions.
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Open Markets Institute Legal Director, Sandeep Vaheesan, published an article in CNN Business about health professional and their maltreatment and harmful working conditions of having the appropriate protective equipment, as well as their punishments for speaking out, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Open Markets Legal Director, Sandeep Vaheesan, published an op-ed in Harvard Law Review on June 9, 2020, discussing the need to overcome the most recent antitrust suit brought about in NCAA college basketball in the Ninth Circuit court.
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A new bill from Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez strikes at the myths behind mergers.
OMI legal director Sandeep Vaheesan published an article in Barron’s, reinforcing Congress’ power to enact legislation and regulations that will prohibit monopolistic behaviors in the marketplace.
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Open Markets Legal Director, Sandeep Vaheesan, published an op-ed in Barron’s on February 21, 2020 discussing the need to overcome the competition ideology and instead think about market rules for a fair and just economy.
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Medium editor Steve LeVine quotes Open Markets legal director, Sandeep Vaheesan, in a piece about the FTC suing to stop a big razor company merger.
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Four cases from the past decade alleging employer collusion against workers show that at present, antitrust law is ill-equipped to protect workers. A root cause is the prevailing philosophy of antitrust today, which focuses on consumer welfare and relies on a narrow interpretation of the law and its history.
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Open Markets' Sandeep Vaheesan and Claire Kelloway published a piece on The American Prospect on November 21, 2019 calling for a fair labor market for food chain workers. An overwhelmingly disenfranchised immigrant workforce and corporate collusion and concentration define work in food and agriculture today, they assert. Reforming these labor markets is essential.
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Prof. Sanjukta Paul and Sandeep Vaheesan published a piece on The Nation asserting that the response to the next recession should put economic power back in the hands of the people. “Rebuilding antitrust law is an essential element of the progressive economic policy agenda,” the write. “Antitrust should be part of a suite of reforms in the Green New Deal—something that we sorely need, no matter when or how hard the next recession hits.”
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Open Markets Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan argues on The American Prospect that corporate power can be neutralized if federal agencies simply used the prodigious authority they’ve been granted. "The president already has extraordinary authority under decades-old statutes," Vaheesan writes. "The question is will he or she appoint officials—to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and other agencies—determined to tame corporate dominance of our economy and politics."
Open Markets Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan asserts that fine print isn’t “voluntary” and we should overhaul our thinking about contractual agreements. In this piece for Current Affairs, Vaheesan explores how we are subject to a dense web of contracts that grant us—or (more often) deprive us of—rights. He argues that against corporate power, Congress must wield its power to ban abusive contractual provisions.
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In this piece for The Atlantic, Nathan Schneider and Open Markets Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan argue that tougher regulation will help to fight monopoly, but workers and small businesses also need the ability to join forces against corporate power. "Collective power—that is, allowing independent workers and small businesses to collaborate to negotiate better treatment from megacorporations, or to start enterprises of their own—should be a pillar of creating an equitable economy," they assert.
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Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan blasts the Supreme Court’s decision in Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas arguing that the decision nullifies the 21st Amendment’s will that states control their alcohol market, and paves the way for monopolistic retail corporations such as Amazon and Walmart to overrun the markets for beer, wine, and spirits.
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While the world has failed to make significant progress in combating climate change over the past decade, the prospect for real action looks very promising today. Proponents of a Green New Deal aim not to nudge the current energy economy toward carbon neutrality but to restructure the production, distribution, and use of energy. Even as it represents a break from the impoverished political imagination of the (still ongoing) neoliberal era, the Green New Deal draws on a rich legal and historical template for transforming our energy economy and deepen democracy.
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Open Markets Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan published an op-ed on Financial Times' Alphaville explaining why America's prosperity depends on stopping mega mergers. He looks at the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint merger and makes the case as to how this merger will not only further concentrate and wireless market from four big players to three but subsequently harm the public by raising prices and workers in the industry by resulting in lower wages.
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Open Markets reporter Matthew Buck and Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan publish an op-ed on The New York Times highlighting that while President Trump's tweets criticize Facebook and Google, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department is making life easier for potential monopolists in Silicon Valley.
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