Bill Baer honored with DOJ’s prestigious John Sherman Award

Bill Baer '72, a long-serving member of Lawrence University's Board of Trustees, was honored Dec. 12 by the U.S. Department of Justice for his decades of impactful work in antitrust law. The DOJ's Antitrust Division presented Baer with its John Sherman Award-the division's highest honor-for his contributions to the "substantive development of antitrust law and the preservation of economic liberty."

Bill Baer '72

Baer, who received his B.A. from Lawrence, majoring in government, and later was awarded Lawrence's Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, served as acting associate attorney general with the Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017. In this role, the third highest ranked position within the DOJ, he supervised the department's Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Tax, and Environment and Natural Resources divisions. That followed a three-year stint as assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division after being nominated by President Obama.

"Few living Americans have contributed more meaningfully or substantially to the life and enforcement mission of our federal antitrust agencies than Bill Baer," Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division said in a released statement. "His storied career was characterized by a deep sense of professionalism, sharp intellect, and kindness that propelled Bill to reshape competition law enforcement to better serve the American people, and we are all the beneficiaries. Bill is a generational talent and visionary who could not be more deserving of the John Sherman Award."

A longtime partner with the law firm of Arnold & Porter, Baer currently serves as a Visiting Fellow with the Brookings Institution. In 2010, the National Law Journal named him one of "the decade's most influential lawyers."

Baer, who holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, is the only individual to have served as the top antitrust enforcer at both U.S. antitrust agencies - first as the director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 1995 to 1999 and later as the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division from 2013 to 2016, according to the DOJ.

During his tenure as assistant attorney general, Baer promoted robust antitrust enforcement by successfully prosecuting civil and criminal violations of the antitrust laws, including by dusting off long-dormant theories of harm and investing in the division's litigation prowess, the DOJ said. Under his leadership, the division halted anticompetitive mergers in a variety of markets, including health insurance and beverages, and secured an unprecedented number of fines from companies engaging in illegal cartel activity. While serving as acting associate attorney general, he oversaw the work of the department's civil litigating and grant-making components. In that role, he successfully led the effort to hold financial institutions accountable in the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities crisis, securing record penalties and consumer redress.

Baer's storied antitrust career began in 1975 as a trial attorney in the FTC's Bureau of Competition. He later served as attorney advisor to the chair and assistant general counsel for legislation and relations. After a successful stint in private practice, he returned to the FTC to serve four years as director of the Bureau of Competition. Baer led the commission to an unprecedented string of litigation victories and set records for the number of mergers reviewed and challenged. The FTC honored Baer with the Miles W. Kirkpatrick Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

Created in 1994, the John Sherman Award is presented by the department's Antitrust Division to a person or persons for outstanding contributions to the field of antitrust law, the protection of American consumers, and the preservation of economic liberty. It is named for Senator John Sherman of Ohio, the author of the Sherman Act of 1890, the nation's first and foremost antitrust law.

Baer served on Lawrence's Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2012, then rejoined the Board beginning in 2017.