David B. Lawrence

I study the role of law in the public governance of private economic power, with a particular focus on how institutions operationalize antitrust and technology regulation. Markets are structured by private actors with economic power to influence their development, subject to the governmental forces that privilege or constrain their conduct. Law may or may not guide that process—it is mediated through institutions like the courts, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and the White House. I am interested in understanding what causes these institutions to succeed or fail in structuring markets consistent with the ideals of free government founded on the supremacy of law.

I did this work for nearly fifteen years within one of the United States’ premier enforcement and regulatory institutions for antitrust and technology governance. At the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, where I served most recently as Policy Director, I was a primary author of the 2023 Merger Guidelines and the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines, developed the legal architecture of the United States’ monopolization cases against Google, Apple, Live Nation, and Visa, drafted legislation for Congressional committee staff and prepared senior officials for testimony, and served as a U.S. Delegate to the OECD Competition Committee. As Policy Director, I had formal oversight of all policy, appeals, and international engagements. On detail to the Federal Communications Commission, I led an interagency task force of more than fifty staff that reviewed the T-Mobile/Sprint transaction and negotiated its 5G buildout remedies.

My scholarship pursues the same project. My work is published or forthcoming in the N.Y.U. Law Review, the Columbia Business Law Review, the CPI Antitrust Chronicle (with Susan Athey), and the Network Law Review, and was nominated for a Concurrences Antitrust Writing Award. I focus this work around three overlapping areas: (1) the substance of antitrust and technology law; (2) the processes for its implementation; and (3) the institutional design challenges presented by the increasing pace and power of technology.

I now work in scholarship and technology development related to law, antitrust, and AI. I am currently a Fellow at the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale, where I guide student research in antitrust. Earlier, I clerked for Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Richard J. Holwell of the Southern District of New York.

My research can be found below and on SSRN. I am prepared to teach Antitrust, Civil Procedure, and Business Associations, with additional interests in AI and Law and Administrative Law.