Presented by the Center for Energy, Transportation, and Environmental Policy and the UT College of Law, this Energy and Environment Forum will explore the history of The Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA was established in 1933 during President Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days in the White House. While the TVA became an institutional reality very early in FDR’s first term, it was the product of more than 20 years of ideological contestation, legislative battles, and coalition building inside and outside Congress. To understand how the TVA went from an intellectual possibility to an established part of the southeastern United States requires going back to the middle of World War 1 and tracing history through to FDR’s court-packing plan in 1937. 

Sandeep Vaheesan is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads Open Markets’ legal advocacy and research work, including its amicus program. He works on various anti-monopoly topics, including antitrust law’s role in structuring labor markets and promoting fair competition.  

Vaheesan’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harvard Law & Policy Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yale Law Journal Forum. He has a forthcoming book titled Democracy in Power with the University of Chicago Press on the history of public and cooperative power in the United States and the lessons it offers for building a clean, publicly accountable electric industry today.