
Sandeep Vaheesan is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads their legal research and advocacy, including the amicus program. He has written and spoken widely on antimonopoly law and policy and building a fair economy. Previously, he worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and American Antitrust Institute.
In his scholarship, advocacy work, and popular commentary, he has focused on, among other topics, the latent statutory powers of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He has laid out how the FTC can strengthen antitrust rules governing corporations and prohibit a range of unfair competitive practices. Building on this work, in March 2019, he and his colleagues at the Open Markets Institute spearheaded a petition that called on the FTC to prohibit non-compete clauses. In a 2021 executive order, President Biden asked for FTC regulatory action to restrict employers’ use of non-competes. The FTC enacted a rule in April 2024 banning non-compete clauses for all workers.
Vaheesan is the author of the book Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in December 2024. The book examines the past, present, and promise of rural electric cooperatives and publicly owned utilities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority—how we created them, how they perform today, and how we can perfect and expand them.
Selected academic and popular writing
· Build Public Renewables, Again, 123 Michigan Law Review (forthcoming 2025) (reviewing Brett Christophers, The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet (2024))
· A Revival of Nondomination in Antitrust Law, 93 George Washington Law Review (forthcoming 2025)
· Seeds of an Antitrust Revival, Democracy, March 13, 2024
· Beyond Noncompetes, Firms Use These Tactics to Stop Workers from Leaving, Washington Post, April 13, 2023
· The Morality of Monopolization Law, 63 William & Mary Law Review Online 119 (2022)
· On Antitrust, Don’t Take Big Tech’s Word for It, Boston Review, March 15, 2022
· How an Old U.S. Antitrust Law Could Foster a Fairer Retail Sector, Harvard Business Review, February 9, 2022 (with Brian Callaci)