About Professor Newman

John Newman is the Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence at the University of Memphis School of Law, where his research focuses on antitrust and antimonopoly, with a particular emphasis on the antitrust law and economics of digital markets.  Professor Newman has the unique distinction of having served the public at both federal antitrust enforcement agencies.  Most recently, he was deputy director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, serving under then-Chair Lina Khan.  He also previously practiced as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division.  In those roles, he oversaw or was involved in several high-profile platform antitrust cases involving Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, American Express, and more.

Professor Newman’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Texas Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and other leading academic journals.  His commentary on current events has been featured by a number of popular media outlets, including CBS News, PBS NewsHour, CNBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Sunday Times (London), The Atlantic, Politico, Bloomberg, and Rolling Stone, among others.  He has testified before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee and been invited to deliver remarks to a wide variety of policymakers and academic audiences within the United States and abroad.  He has been voted Professor of the Year by students, and his research has received multiple awards from international and national scholarly associations.

Professor Newman serves on the advisory boards of the American Antitrust Institute, the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies, and the Academic Society for Competition Law, and as an assistant editor of the Antitrust Law Journal.  He also regularly advises private-sector clients on contemporary antitrust matters and maintains an active amicus practice, having served as lead drafter for amicus briefs filed by the American Antitrust Institute, leading venture-capital firm Y Combinator, and more.

Prior to joining the Memphis Law faculty, Professor Newman was a tenured member of the University of Miami School of Law faculty.  In summer 2024, he was honored to teach an international group of students as a lecturer with the University of Tokyo Law School.

While earning his J.D. with highest honors from the University of Iowa College of Law, Professor Newman served as research assistant to Herbert Hovenkamp, was managing editor of the Iowa Law Review, and published student notes in journals at the University of Iowa and the University of Virginia.

Selected Publications

Attention Capitalism: The Law and Political Economy of Attention Markets, 78 Stan. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026).

The Forgotten Anti-Monopoly Law: The Second Half of Clayton Act § 7, 103 Tex. L. Rev. 785 (2025) (with Robert H. Lande & Commissioner Rebecca Kelley Slaughter).

The Output–Welfare Fallacy: A Modern Antitrust Paradox, 107 Iowa L. Rev. 563 (2022).

Racist Antitrust, Antiracist Antitrust, 66 Antitrust Bulletin 384 (2021).

Reactionary Antitrust, in Herbert Hovenkamp: The Dean of American Antitrust Law Liber Americorum (Nicolas Charbit & Sébastien Gachot eds., 2021).

Antitrust in Attention Markets: Objections and Responses, 59 Santa Clara L. Rev. 743 (2020) (invited symposium contribution).

Expanding the Merger Narrative: A Response to Sokol, 70 Fla. L. Rev. F. 179 (2020).

Antitrust in Digital Markets, 72 Vand. L. Rev. 1497 (2019).

Procompetitive Justifications in Antitrust Law, 94 Ind. L.J. 501 (2019).

The Myth of Free, 86 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 513 (2018).

Complex Antitrust Harm in Platform Markets, Antitrust Chron., at 52 (May 2017).

Essay, The Antitrust Jurisprudence of Neil Gorsuch, 45 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 225 (2017).

Antitrust in Zero-Price Markets: Applications, 94 Wash. U. L. Rev. 49 (2016).

Antitrust in Zero-Price Markets: Foundations, 164 U. Pa. L. Rev. 149 (2015).

Copyright Freeconomics, 66 Vand. L. Rev. 1409 (2013).

Classes Taught

Antitrust, Contracts, Contracts II, Seminar on Antitrust & Big Tech, Mergers & Acquisitions, Conflict of Laws