Donald I. Baker is our recently retired Co-Founder and Partner Emeritus. Don is a former head in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and he established with Todd Miller in 1995 an independent Washington firm specializing in antitrust, competition policy and international law issues.
Don is the only modern member of the career Antitrust Division staff to be appointed Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the Antitrust Division. He was a trial attorney and then Section Chief (1966-1971), and Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Regulated Industries, Appeals and Foreign Commerce (1972-1975), before becoming Assistant Attorney General (1976-1977). During this time, Don became a very active participant in successfully urging deregulation of US airlines, eliminating cartel pricing on stock exchanges, and in bringing the antitrust case that ultimately broke up the AT&T telephone monopoly.
Don was Professor of Law at Cornell Law School (1975-1978), where he taught courses on antitrust law, utility regulation, financial services regulation, and international business transactions. Thereafter, he was a Washington partner of two major law firms (1978-1994), before starting Baker & Miller in 1995.
As an antitrust lawyer in Washington, Don’s efforts have included all aspects of antitrust counseling; representing complainants as well as targets (or merger parties) in various government investigations; corporate internal investigations; major arbitrations; and several private antitrust cases for plaintiffs and defendants. He has also served as an expert witness on federal antitrust issues in state courts in Delaware and Texas.
Since 2000, he has briefed and argued cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and several U.S. Courts of Appeal. These include successfully representing the governments of Australia, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom in four international jurisdiction or sovereign immunity cases in the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also made successful sovereign immunity defenses to obtain dismissal of District Court cases against the Netherlands and United Kingdom.
Don is co-author of two treatises that have been regularly reissued in the new editions—Baker & Brandel, The Law of Electronic Funds Transfer Systems and Rowley & Baker, International Mergers—The Antitrust Process. He has written articles and letters on politics, liberty issues, and competition that have been published in The Financial Times, The Global Competition Review and other international publications.
Beginning in 2006, and for several years thereafter, Don taught a course on Comparative International Antitrust Law at the George Washington University and he has guest lectured several times for Todd’s course on Comparative and International Antitrust Law at the Washington College of Law, American University.
Don has been actively interested and involved in alternative dispute resolution processes; and he has served as arbitrator, mediator, or counsel in various ADR processes. In 1988, he received the CPR Award for Significant Practical Achievement in Alternative Dispute Resolution as a result of some innovative procedures that he and his co-counsel created in a major arbitration involving an antitrust challenge to interchange fees on a leading banking network.
In 2011, Don was one of ten individuals selected to receive the newly-created Antitrust Lifetime Achievement Award from the London-based Global Competition Review. In 2015, the Washington-based American Antitrust Institute awarded Don its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Don continues to serve as an officer and a Director of the Washington Bach Consorts (which produces baroque choral music in Washington).
Don received his undergraduate degree at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University; his first law degree at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge; and his second law degree at Harvard Law School.