FTC Chair Lina Khan, who rose to prominence with a 2017 academic paper that called for a break-up of Amazon, now has a chance to test her approach in the courts
and how it gives up on a lot of the more radical ideas in her famous law review paper. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Khan’s Amazon-focused antitrust framework had already reframed debate in Washington around whether existing doctrine captures the company’s power. Her FTC also explored monopsony as an enforcement theory, extending its focus beyond consumer-facing markets.
This court test follows criticism of the agency’s litigation-first approach. Its importance is therefore not only the Amazon dispute, but whether Khan’s broader legal framing can survive judicial scrutiny.
First-order effects
- The FTC must convert Khan’s academic critique into claims and evidence that meet courts’ current antitrust standards.
- Amazon faces a high-stakes legal defense over conduct and market power, while the FTC’s enforcement credibility becomes tied to how the case proceeds.
Second-order effects
- Other large platforms gain an early signal of which theories, market definitions, and evidence the FTC can realistically use against them.
- A closely watched case can shape the agency’s near-term choice between pursuing novel theories in court and concentrating on claims with clearer precedent.
Third-order effects
- If courts accept even part of this approach, antitrust enforcement could more routinely examine platform power through relationships with sellers, suppliers, and other business users—not solely end consumers.
- If it does not, the gap between ambitions to update antitrust doctrine and what courts will enforce may persist, increasing pressure for legislative rather than case-by-case change.
The trend: This is part of a broader push to test whether US antitrust law can address the power of digital platforms using theories that extend beyond traditional consumer-price analysis.