26th Annual Policy Conference – The State of the Antitrust Technocracy

The debate over the proper role of technocratic experts in a modern democracy has taken on urgent, society-wide proportions. Many Americans have lost trust in institutions, believing that experts with specialized knowledge have smuggled political biases into policymaking under the guise of scientific neutrality. At the same time, many also recognize that jettisoning technical expertise from policymaking risks replacing an ethic of neutrality with rampant politicization. In antitrust as elsewhere, extreme views threaten the stability of democratic institutions.

A consensus once held that antitrust had long ago evolved into a mature technocracy and left behind its democratic origins as a “movement.”[1] Today, that consensus has largely evaporated. Bipartisan, populist antipathy toward powerful corporations has reignited the public’s once “faded passion”[2] for antitrust law and competition policy. Industrial organization experts and economically sophisticated lawyers continue to shape law and policy, but their work is now heavily scrutinized and increasingly politicized. If antitrust is to “yield the best allocation of our economic resources … while at the same time providing an environment conductive to the preservation of our democratic political and social institutions,”[3] then the country will have to reconcile its technocratic and populist impulses.

AAI’s 26th Annual Policy Conference will seek to advance this goal. Three panels of speakers will offer insights, analysis, and recommendations for applying the antitrust laws in a climate of political upheaval and skepticism of experts. Panelists will grapple with the risks and opportunities presented by recent efforts to (1) reduce or eliminate economic complexity from Sherman Act enforcement, (2) rethink or reinvent merger policy, and (3) apply political pressure to agency enforcement agendas.

The conference will include a gala luncheon featuring the presentation of the 2025 AAI Antitrust Achievement Award and the presentation of the Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship.

[1] See, e.g., Richard Hofstadter, What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?, in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays 189 (1st ed. 1965) (observing that antitrust “now runs its quiet course without much public attention”); Daniel A. Crane, Technocracy and Antitrust, 86 Tex. L. Rev. 1159, 1160 (2008) (observing that antitrust “has become increasingly separated from popular politics, insulated from direct democratic pressures, delegated to industrial policy specialists, and compartmentalized as a regulatory discipline.”).

[2] Hofstadter, supra n.1 at 190.

[3] Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 356 U.S. 1, 4 (1958).

CONFERENCE LOCATION:

National Press Club Holeman Lounge
529 14th Street NW, 13th Floor
Washington, DC 20045

CLE CREDITS:

This conference was approved by the Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education Board for 4.5 CLE credit hours. Attendees will be emailed CLE certificate of attendance after the conference.

REGISTRATION PRICING:

$225 | Conference Registration
$100 | Government, Academic, or Nonprofit
$0 | Media
$0 | Advisory Board, Sponsor, or Invited Guest