Professor Elettra Bietti Receives Best Junior Paper Award from ASCOLA

06.30.25 — Professor Elettra Bietti has received the 2025 Best Junior Paper Award from the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA). The award was presented during ASCOLA’s annual conference, held June 27 in Chicago.

Bietti was recognized for her paper, “Rawlsian Antitrust,” which revisits philosopher John Rawls’ theory of justice to explore how antitrust law can advance economic and political fairness.

“The paper ‘Rawlsian Antitrust’ stands out as a work of exceptional intellectual ambition and normative sophistication,” the award jury wrote in its statement. “Through a bold and original philosophical reframing, the author reinterprets antitrust enforcement using the lens of Rawlsian justice, offering a vision of competition law not merely as a tool for market efficiency but as a means of advancing fairness, democracy and political legitimacy.”

“I am honored that the jury chose to recognize my work” said Bietti. “Rawlsian ideas on democracy and markets have become really timely in this historical moment. I hope the paper can begin a conversation on antitrust law and political philosophy.”

An expert on the regulation of digital technologies, data and digital platform intermediaries, Bietti joined the Northeastern faculty in 2023 as assistant professor of law and computer science within the School of Law and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Her research advances infrastructural and collective dimensions in privacy, data governance and antitrust law.

Bietti’s work has been published or is forthcoming in legal venues such as the Texas Law Review, Illinois Law Review, Georgetown Tech Law Review, Pace Law Review, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, the Computer Law and Security Review, as well as non-legal venues, such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency and the Journal of Social Computing.

About Northeastern University School of Law

The nation’s leader in experiential legal education since 1968, Northeastern University School of Law offers the longest-running, most extensive experience-based legal education program in the country. Northeastern guarantees its students unparalleled practical legal work experiences through its signature Cooperative Legal Education Program. More than 1,000 employers worldwide in a wide range of legal, government, nonprofit and business organizations participate in the program. With a focus on social justice and innovation, Northeastern University School of Law blends theory and practice, providing students with a unique set of skills and experiences to successfully practice law.

For more information, contact d.feldman@northeastern.edu