Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks at the 2024 John Sherman Award Presentation

Remarks as Delivered

Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks to all of you for coming here to celebrate Bill Baer — a legend of the antitrust bar, and my friend.

Bill and I met more than 40 years ago, when we both joined Arnold & Porter after our first tours of duty in the government. Bill’s was at the FTC, and mine was at DOJ.

At Arnold & Porter, we had the great good fortune to work with the legendary antitrust academician, enforcer, and lawyer Bob Pitofsky — who was himself a Sherman Award winner.

As it turned out, none of the three of us could stay away from public service for very long.

As you know, Bill would go on to become the only person to head antitrust enforcement at both the FTC and at DOJ. He won important victories in complex and high-profile cases. And he helped to usher in a new era of antitrust enforcement.

Global Competition Review has twice named Bill the best competition lawyer in the world. Best Lawyers has twice honored him as the best antitrust lawyer in Washington. And the FTC has given him its version of the Sherman Award — the Miles Kirkpatrick Lifetime Achievement Award.

So, it was about time that Bill got the only antitrust award that really matters: The Justice Department’s Sherman Award.

It is deeply meaningful for me to be here to see this. In my previous stint at Main Justice, I had the honor to be on hand when the Antitrust Division gave out the second ever Sherman Act Award — the Sherman Award — to my friend and former professor, Phil Areeda.

Today, in my final tour of duty, I get to see the award given to Bill, my friend and former colleague.

And just a quick note to the ethics police out there: I had nothing do with choosing the award winner — in either case.

Now, let me just say a few words about Bill’s extraordinary tenure at the Antitrust Division and in competition.

I know many of you have already raised a pint to Bill’s honor this afternoon.

And as you heard from Jonathan, that’s a fitting tribute to the man who led the Department’s suit to block a $20 billion deal that would have brought Modelo entirely under the company that owns Budweiser.

Bill left Wisconsin for law school in 1972. Now he can go back to Milwaukee and say he saved beer. Way to go, Bill.

In addition to challenging the InBev-Modelo merger, Bill led the Department in preventing a merger of Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee in an already overly consolidated market for canned seafood. In doing so, he probably saved the company from some embarrassing jokes about “the birds and the bees.”

Bill also intervened in the proposed merger between US Airways and American Airlines, securing a settlement that required the airlines to relinquish their strangle-hold on more than 130 slots at the busiest airports in the country, including DCA.

Bill used to smile when he looked out his window on the third floor of this building and saw Southwest Airlines flights departing from DCA — something possible only because of that settlement.

Through his work, Bill has shown a generation of Justice Department attorneys — and so many others — why taking up these cases is so important.

Today, Bill is rightly regarded as a preeminent expert on antitrust issues of every kind.

Indeed, as I was preparing for the transition to Attorney General in early 2021, I turned to several articles and reports that Bill wrote in order to brush up on the most recent developments in antitrust law.

So, thanks, Bill, for brushing me up on the network effects of two-sided platforms.

In those reports and articles, Bill advocated for the actions he believed the next generation of antitrust enforcers should take.

He argued that the antitrust agencies should be advocates for a more robust approach to enforcement, insulated from political interference.

He made the case that preventing consolidation, particularly in online and tech markets, is an urgent mission.

He urged the antitrust divisions to be more — the antitrust agencies — to be more assertive in challenging acquisitions of nascent competitors, potential entrants, and those in vertical relationships where the combination reduces competition.

He challenged them to take a fresh look at the behavior of dominant firms that has the purpose and effect of limiting the ability of actual or would-be competitors to offer meaningful alternatives to those with monopoly or near-monopoly power.

And he insisted that analytically sound and fact-based antitrust enforcement would provide the public, the business community, the courts, and the legislative branch with assurance that it is the merits that count — not political ideology, whim, or the desire to pick winners and losers in the economy.

Gee, Bill, sounds just like what the Antitrust Division has been doing for the last few years. Thank you for the advice.

Bill also warned that more personnel would be needed if antitrust enforcement were to fulfill its role as economic cop on the beat.

Bill didn’t know the half of it. When I was sworn in as Attorney General in early 2021, there were just over 650 employees in the Antitrust Division — far fewer employees than when I first joined the Justice Department in 1979.

Needless to say, that dramatic reduction in force occurred despite the tremendous expansion of our economy and of merger activity during the prior four decades.

I am pleased to report that today the Division has over 800 employees — and still growing.

And speaking of personnel, during the transition I also sought Bill’s advice in identifying the right people to fill important roles in the division and the Department. So, if you’re in this room today, you may well owe a thank you to Bill as well.

In addition to Bill’s legacy as an advocate and an influential voice in antitrust law, another legacy of his time as a leader of the division was — as Jonathan just said — his kindness.

Bill was beloved by the lawyers and staff of the Antitrust Division because he got to know them personally and invested in those with whom he worked — from section chiefs to junior line attorneys to staff attorneys to paralegals. Economists, too. He championed the division’s people and, in so doing, he furthered its mission.

Bill spent his final months at the Justice Department serving as Acting Associate Attorney General. It was a fitting promotion for an extraordinary public servant.

It meant that the rest of the Department got to experience a little of what the Antitrust Division had: a kind, wise, and inspiring leader, devoted to the people of this Department and to the people of this country.

Bill’s legacy is all around us. It is in this room, full of a generation of antitrust leaders he mentored and inspired and worked with. It is on our grocery shelves. It is soaring through our skies and landing at our airports.

Throughout his life, Bill has been a fierce believer in competition and in protecting competition in almost everything he does.

I say almost because his friends revealed how, in law school, Bill successfully eliminated the competition — beating out the extensive roster of other students striving for the attention of his now wife, Nancy.

And I am told that he did so in a bowling shirt — as befits any proper son of the Midwest.

Bill’s proudest legacy — as Jonathan said — is his family: his wife, Nancy, his sons, Michael and Andrew.

It should come as no surprise that Michael managed to forge his own path to the Justice Department, where he has served in multiple important roles in the Civil Division.

And as Jonathan said, I’d like to recognize the lights of his life, his two granddaughters, Eliza and Grace.

As a fellow grandfather, I know he takes more pride in them than any award we could bestow.

So, Bill, this honor is so well deserved.

I join your many friends and family in raising a pint to you, at the antitrust bar. Congratulations, my friend. 

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs

Source: Justice.gov