Steve Shadowen

Mr. Shadowen is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading antitrust lawyers, a result of his dedicated work on cases where intellectual property and antitrust law intersect. He was a lead counsel for the purchaser plaintiffs in In re Brand-Name Prescription Drugs Antitrust Litigation (1999), the landmark case that began calling Big Pharma to account for anticompetitive conduct. He later was among the handful of lawyers who led the plaintiff bar’s efforts in “pay-for-delay” litigation, culminating in the Supreme Court’s decision in FTC v. Actavis, Inc., 570 U.S. 136 (2013). He and a co-author then pioneered the “product-hopping” theory of antitrust liability. He continues today to follow Big Pharma’s anticompetitive conduct wherever it goes, spearheading, for example, efforts to prohibit the use of No-Generics Restraints in development agreements among brand-drug manufacturers. Outside the pharmaceutical industry, Mr. Shadowen is co-lead counsel for a class of merchants in the U.S. seeking to reform the interchange-fee rules of Visa and Mastercard.

For his work in securing economic justice for healthcare consumers, in 2013 the American Antitrust Institute awarded Mr. Shadowen its first-ever national accolade for Outstanding Antitrust Litigation Achievement in Private Law Practice. A 2021 overview of U.S. antitrust law singled out Mr. Shadowen as a “fearsome and devastating hero … of plaintiff litigation.”  He serves on the advisory boards of the American Antitrust Institute and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies.

In the civil rights arena, Mr. Shadowen is dedicated to improving young people’s access to education. Anticipating today’s hot-button issue by 15 years, his series of scholarly articles in 2008 – 2010 attacked legacy preferences in admissions to elite universities, leading to the Century Foundation’s groundbreaking book, Affirmative Action for the Rich (2010). In human rights litigation, Mr. Shadowen obtained the first-ever ruling that the families of Mexican nationals killed by U.S. agents in Mexico can obtain judicial review of those killings in U.S. courts—an issue that is now pending in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He is also lead counsel for the Government of Mexico in its lawsuits against U.S.-based gun manufacturers and dealers, demanding that they reform their distribution practices to help prevent trafficking of guns into Mexico.

As a law student Mr. Shadowen was the criminal procedure project editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. Upon graduation from Georgetown he served as a law clerk for the Hon. Boyce F. Martin, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Since 2012 Mr. Shadowen has served on the Board of Trustees of St. Edward’s University. He was Chair of the Board from 2020 to 2023, and he currently serves on the Executive Committee. In 2016 the University honored him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award.

• J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, cum laude
• B.A., St. Edward’s University, summa cum laude

• American Antitrust Institute Advisory Board
• Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies Advisory Board
• Best Lawyer in America for Bet-the Company Litigation, Antitrust Law, Commercial Litigation, and Antitrust Litigation

“Solving the Product-Hopping Conundrum Through Safe Harbors and a No-Economic-Sense Test,” 28 Research in L. & Econ. 89 (2018) (with M. Carrier)

“U.S. Border Patrol’s Policy of Extrajudicial Killing,” 28 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 1 (2018)

“Causation Principles in Pharmaceutical Antitrust Litigation,” 27 Competition 29 (2018)

“Product Hopping: A New Framework,” 92 Notre Dame L. Rev. 167 (2016) (with M. Carrier)

“Model Jury Instructions: Trial By Actavis,” 67 Rutgers L. Rev. 557 (2015) (with D. Sorensen)

“Bringing Market Discipline to Pharmaceutical Product Reformulations,” 42 Int’l Rev. Intel. Prop. & Comp. Law 698 ( 2011) (with K. Leffler and J. Lukens).

“Personal Dignity, Equal Opportunity, and the Elimination of Legacy Preferences,” 21 Geo Mason U. Civ. Rts. L.J. 31 (2010)

“Heirs of the American Experiment,” in Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions (R. Kahlenberg, ed., 2010) (with S. Tulante).

“Anticompetitive Product Changes in the Pharmaceutical Industry,” 41 Rutgers L.J. 1 (2009) (with K. Leffler & J. Lukens).