In early January 2021, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judge, and former Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland to lead the Department of Justice. If confirmed as Attorney General, the department’s antitrust division would report to him. Since his moribund nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, Garland has been heralded by some commentators as an antitrust expert. Garland certainly has experience with antitrust matters, not particularly common with prior attorneys general.

As an adjunct professor at Harvard Law School from 1985-86, Garland briefly taught antitrust law, focusing on immunities and exemptions. The following year, he wrote an antitrust article for the Yale Law Journal on the state antitrust immunity where he called for deference to state regulation. As a partner at Arnold & Porter, he litigated one published antitrust case involving a tying claim. On the D.C. Circuit, Garland joined the majority in several antitrust cases, authored a partial concurrence and dissent in an open-records case implicating alleged harm to competition, and recently wrote an opinion dismissing antitrust claims against big tech under the Communications Decency Act’s immunity provision. He will be the first federal judge in recent memory to serve as the Attorney General.