2012 State of the Net Conference: Keynote Address by Christine Varney
Channel: Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
Date: 2012-01-20

2012 State of the Net Conference
Washington Hyatt Capitol Hill
January 17-18, 2012

Keynote Address by Christine Varney, Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Christine A. Varney is a partner in Cravath's Litigation Department and serves as the Chair of the Firm's Antitrust practice. Ms. Varney has been widely recognized as one of the leading antitrust lawyers in the United States in both private practice and in government service, and she is the only person to have served as both the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust and as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.

From April 2009 until August 2011, Ms. Varney served as Assistant Attorney General and headed the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. In that role she oversaw all aspects of the Division's operations, including merger review, criminal and civil litigation and investigations and coordination with competition regulators outside the United States.

From October 1994 through August 1997, Ms. Varney served as a Commissioner of the FTC. While at the FTC, she played a leading role on a broad range of competition law issues, and she is widely credited with pioneering the application of innovation market theory analysis to information technology and biotechnology transactions.

From 1997 when she left the FTC until her appointment as Assistant Attorney General in 2009, Ms. Varney was in private practice, representing major corporations before the DOJ and the FTC and advising her clients on a wide variety of legal and business issues.

Prior to becoming FTC Commissioner, Ms. Varney served as Assistant to the President and Secretary to the Cabinet in the Clinton Administration.

Ms. Varney was born in Washington, D.C. She received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany in 1977, an M.P.A. from Syracuse University in 1982 and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1986.