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Detur Book Prize
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Massachusetts Bar

American Constitution Society for Law and Policy

Council on Foreign Relations

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A solution to inequalities wherever we look―in health care, secure retirement, education―is as close as the public library. Or the post office, community pool, or local elementary school. Public options―reasonably priced government-provided services that coexist with private options―are all around us, ready to increase opportunity, expand freedom, and reawaken civic engagement if we will only let them.Whenever you go to your local public library, send mail via the post office, or visit Yosemite, you are taking advantage of a longstanding American tradition: the public option. Some of the most useful and beloved institutions in American life are public options―yet they are seldom celebrated as such. These government-supported opportunities coexist peaceably alongside private options, ensuring equal access and expanding opportunity for all.Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott challenge decades of received wisdom about the proper role of government and consider the vast improvements that could come from the expansion of public options. Far from illustrating the impossibility of effective government services, as their critics claim, public options hold the potential to transform American civic life, offering a wealth of solutions to seemingly intractable problems, from housing shortages to the escalating cost of health care.Imagine a low-cost, high-quality public option for child care. Or an extension of the excellent Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees to all Americans. Or every person having access to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank, with no fees and no minimums. From broadband internet to higher education, The Public Option reveals smart new ways to meet pressing public needs while spurring healthy competition. More effective than vouchers or tax credits, public options could offer us all fairer choices and greater security.

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Vanderbilt is a dynamic center of research, learning and growth - a private research university of 6,300 undergrads and 5,300 grad/professional students.

Vanderbilt University

Ganesh Sitaraman teaches and writes about constitutional law, the regulatory state, economic policy, democracy and foreign affairs. He joined the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 2011 and was named to the New York Alumni Chancellor's Chair in Law in 2021.

He is the director of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, which focuses on cutting-edge topics in political economy and regulation to swiftly bring research, education, and policy proposals from infancy to maturity.
 
Sitaraman’s most recent book is The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America (Basic Books, 2019). He is also the co-author, with Anne Alstott, of The Public Option (Harvard Univ. Press, 2019), and the author of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), which was one of The New York Times’ 100 notable books of 2017, and The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars (Oxford University Press, 2012), which won the 2013 Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.
 
Sitaraman is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a member of the American Law Institute, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a co-founder of the Great Democracy Initiative. He serves on the boards of The American Prospect, the American Constitution Society, and Foreign Policy for America. Sitaraman was also a longtime adviser to Elizabeth Warren, including serving as a senior adviser on her 2020 presidential campaign, her senior counsel in the Senate, and her policy director during her 2012 Senate campaign. He has been profiled in The New York Times and Politico for his work at the nexus of politics and ideas.
 
In 2018, Sitaraman was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and at Vanderbilt, he has been awarded a Chancellor’s Award for Research and a Chancellor’s Faculty Fellowship. In 2016, he was a visiting assistant professor at Yale Law School. Before joining Vanderbilt, Sitaraman was the Public Law Fellow and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, a research fellow at the Counterinsurgency Training Center – Afghanistan in Kabul, and a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Public Option

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Regulation

Foreign Relations Law

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Income Inequality

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Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation Website

Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation

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ftc-chair-commends-vanderbilt-policy-accelerator-initiative-for-research-on-policies-to-help-govern-ai

New York Alumni Chancellor's Chair in Law

The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation (VPA) is leading the way in research and policy recommendations on the governance of artificial intelligence. At the Third Annual Networks, Platforms & Utilities conference hosted by the VPA in June, the groundbreaking initiative was commended by FTC Chair Lina Khan for its impact on her work with the agency.

 As part of Discovery Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation is a groundbreaking initiative to bolster innovative research and education at Vanderbilt. The mission of VPA is to swiftly develop and advance cutting-edge research, education and policy proposals at a pace that aligns with the urgency of today’s challenges.

The VPA encompasses several projects, including one dedicated to revitalizing the study of the law and political economy of networks platforms, and utilities (NPUs) in transportation, communications, energy and banking.

“Many of our country’s most pressing economic and social challenges are directly tied to how we govern network, platform, and utility industries, including airline flight cancellations, social media regulation, banking failures and electric grid crashes,” said Ganesh Sitaraman, the New York Alumni Chancellor’s Chair in Law at Vanderbilt Law School and director of VPA.

VPA’s Project on Networks, Platforms and Utilities has developed a series of papers and policy proposals to improve the governance of these sectors. Among this work are a set of proposals to policymakers for regulating air travel, a plan for stabilizing and regulating the banking sector, and 40 recommendations to promote competition throughout the American economy.

With growing interest in AI, VPA has turned its eye to how policymakers can address the harms that come from concentration in the AI technology stack. VPA’s papers have developed an antimonopoly approach to regulating AI, addressed public capacity for AI, and offered proposals on federal procurement of AI resources.

VPA’s work in this field has gotten increasing attention. VPA director Ganesh Sitaraman participated in one of the U.S. Senate’s AI Fora in 2023. And during the Third Annual Networks, Platforms & Utilities conference hosted by the VPA in June, FTC Chair Lina Khan specifically noted VPA’s impact on the agency. 

“I think the work that VPA has been doing on AI has been so enormously useful,” said Khan. “It’s really striking how it took 15 years before the NPU toolkit was even discussed alongside the Web 2.0 giants. So, the fact that from the very get-go this kind of framework is being applied in the context of AI policy discussions really marks that forward movement.”

During the June conference, participants—which included 64 attendees from 15 different countries— discussed how their jurisdictions of study approach the regulation of network, platform and utility industries. This year’s conference was structured around eight panels, one on general themes and seven featuring a specific NPU sector: railroads, electricity, banking & finance, airlines, social infrastructure, tech platforms and telecommunications.

“Vanderbilt is a leader in research on these topics, and we were very excited to welcome scholars from around the world to Nashville and to Vanderbilt, in order to explore these issues from a comparative and global perspective,” said Sitaraman.

In the coming months, the conference organizers intend to compile the papers presented at the conference into an edited volume.

To learn more, visit the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator website. 

FTC Chair Commends Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator Initiative for Research on Policies to Help Govern AI

vanderbilt-announces-creation-of-the-vanderbilt-policy-accelerator-for-political-economy-and-regulation

  Vanderbilt University announced the creation of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation, a $6 million effort to advance research, education and ideas.

 The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator is part of Discovery Vanderbilt, a groundbreaking initiative to bolster innovative research and education at Vanderbilt. The policy accelerator will be based in the Law School and led by New York Alumni Chancellor’s Chair and Professor of Law Ganesh Sitaraman. Sitaraman brings extensive experience in politics and public policy and will collaborate with peers within Vanderbilt Law School and across the university.

“Discovery Vanderbilt provides the resources and support to empower cutting-edge research that can make significant impact locally and globally,” Provost C. Cybele Raver said. “Ganesh is a dynamic, highly accomplished scholar in law, government and political thought; he’ll bring tremendous expertise in leading this innovative new effort to solve some of the most important policy challenges of our time.”  In 2022, a committee of faculty from across the institution considered options for enhancing public policy at Vanderbilt. VPA leverages Discovery Vanderbilt funding to extend Vanderbilt’s strengths in public policy—which includes Peabody College’s work on education policy, the College of Arts and Science’s leadership on civic and social science policy and Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s work on public health—to issues on political economy and regulation.

“I am honored to lead the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator,” Sitaraman said. “We plan to cultivate, grow and spread innovative research and policy ideas—and at a rapid pace that aligns with the urgency of the challenges we face.”  Ganesh Sitaraman  The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator’s first initiative is its Project on Networks, Platforms and Utilities, an effort to revive and reimagine regulation in the transportation, communications, energy, banking and technology sectors. This work, already underway, has been led by Sitaraman and Professor Morgan Ricks, Herman O. Loewenstein Chair in Law. Together, Sitaraman and Ricks recently published Networks, Platforms & Utilities, the first casebook in the field in a quarter century, co-authored with Shelley Welton (University of Pennsylvania) and Lev Menand (Columbia).

“From supply chain disruptions and airline flight cancellations to issues with big tech platforms, research into the law governing networks, platforms and utilities couldn’t be more timely,” said Chris Guthrie, dean of the Vanderbilt University Law School. “The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator’s work helps advance productive and cross-partisan solutions to these pressing problems.”  “We live in a time of great transformations in our economy,” Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said. “These changes create an opportunity to advance new paradigms, research and policy ideas through bold scholarship and collaboration. The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator will put us at the forefront of these efforts.”  Scholars, students, policymakers and the public are encouraged to visit vu.edu/vpa to learn more about the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator’s work and sign up to receive updates.


Vanderbilt announces creation of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation

The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy & Regulation, led by Law School Professor Ganesh Sitaraman, focuses on cutting-edge topics in political economy and regulation, bringing research, education and policy to life at a rapid pace.



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Steps must be taken to preserve middle-class America or the United States will cease to be a democracy, says Vanderbilt law professor Ganesh Sitaraman in his new book.

“The last 30 years have brought stagnant wages, rising inequality and a middle class that is on its last legs,” says Sitaraman, associate professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School and the former policy director and senior counsel to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Political power is increasingly held by a smaller group, creating legitimate fears that the government has been co-opted to serve corporations and wealthy individuals and to shield them from competition. The fight to rebuild the middle class is partly something that’s constitutionally necessary.”

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Vanderbilt Law School's Ganesh Sitaraman warns that the American middle class is endangered.

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