Justice’s New Antitrust Chief Shakes Up Unit

The Justice Department’s new antitrust chief, in his first official act, has reorganized his division by consolidating litigation teams and elevating an economist as one of his top deputies.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Douglas H. Ginsburg told division employees in a memorandum Friday that he was ordering the shift “only because I am utterly convinced that it will improve our ability to do our jobs--to enforce the antitrust laws.”

Among the changes, which must be approved by Congress to become permanent, is the consolidation of nine litigating sections in the Washington antitrust office into just five. One unit, which formerly was responsible for going to court in foreign commerce cases, will surrender its litigating authority to other departmental lawyers and become instead an advisory group on trade policy.

None of the division’s field offices--in Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Cleveland, New York City and Dallas--will be affected by the reorganization. Nor does the move entail any dismissals or new hires, according to Ginsburg’s plan, which he portrayed as making more efficient use of a staff that already had been cut 35% by the Reagan Administration.

As a consequence of the cutbacks, the division’s ratio of supervisory to non-supervisory people had ballooned, with some offices having only two attorneys per supervisor.

“In my view, the Washington litigation sections should have at least 20 attorneys and a full complement of support staff; few of our current sections are at this minimum efficient scale,” Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg said he was elevating the status of one official, Economic Policy Director Frederick R. Warren-Boulten, to that of deputy assistant attorney general in “recognition of the fact that economists properly have a role equal to that of lawyers in the development of antitrust policy.”