Part of BKC's Spring Speaker Series:
State Attorneys General have been increasing active in antitrust enforcement – both in focusing on the impact of challenges to competition in their own states and in nationwide efforts in cases typically brought jointly with either the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Antitrust expert Jon Sallet will discuss how litigation such as the Google Search case, where 38 AGs filed their own case alongside the DOJ case, has established important principles that support future antitrust enforcement. In this respect, Sallet will make a case for why State AGs should be seen as leader who bring additional experience and expertise to the cause of antitrust enforcement. Sallet will be joined by HLS faculty member and former Attorney General of Maine James Tierney, who has taught courses on the role of state attorneys general and has directed the attorney general clinic.
Speakers
Jonathan Sallet currently serves as a special assistant attorney general for the State of Colorado. Prior governmental service includes an appointment as general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, deputy assistant attorney general for litigation in the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and director of the Office of Policy & Strategic Planning for the U.S. Department of Commerce. His publications concentrate on antitrust issues, including Louis Brandeis: A Man for This Season, 16 Colo. Tech. L.J. 365 (2018), and, with Professor Nancy Rose, The Dichotomous Treatment of Efficiencies in Horizontal Mergers: Too Much? Too Little? Getting it Right, 168 U Penn L. Rev. 1941 (2020), which has been named a winner of the 2021 Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship. Jonathan Sallet is a Senior Research Fellow at M-RCBG where he will contribute to a seminar series on Big Tech, global tech policy and tech regulation, while collaborating on a paper on related topics.
James Tierney is a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. Since 2010, Mr. Tierney has taught courses on the role of state attorneys general and has directed the attorney general clinic. He taught a similar course at Columbia Law School from 2000 until 2016, where he was the Director of the National State Attorney General Program, and was a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School in the Spring of 2018. He is currently the director of StateAG.org, which is an educational resource on the office of state attorney general. Mr. Tierney served as the Attorney General of Maine from 1980 until 1990. During those years, Mr. Tierney played an active role in the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and served on its various committees. Since 1990 he has instructed newly elected state Attorneys General on the effective performance of their office and consulted for numerous offices of attorneys general on a host of structural, legal and ethical issues. Mr. Tierney has served as a Special Prosecutor in Florida, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Vermont and, on behalf of NAAG, has authored an analysis of the operations of state grand jury practice.
