Digital Commons Network^™

Tweaking Antitrust's Business Model , Thom Lambert

Faculty Publications

This essay evaluates Hovenkamp's suggestions, concluding that most are sound, that a few might be slightly revised to enhance their effectiveness or administrability, and that a couple are downright unwise. In particular, the essay criticizes Hovenkamp's call for abandonment of the indirect purchaser rule and his proposed test for identifying exclusionary conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

Weyerhaeuser And The Search For Antitrust's Holy Grail, Thom Lambert

Faculty Publications

A general definition of exclusionary conduct has become a sort of Holy Grail for antitrust scholars. At present, four proposed definitions appear most promising: (1) conduct that could exclude an equally efficient rival; (2) conduct that raises rivals' costs unjustifiably; (3) conduct that, on balance, impairs consumer welfare by creating market power without providing countervailing consumer benefits; and (4) conduct that makes no economic sense but for its exclusionary effect on rivals.

Antitrust And The Supremacy Clause , Richard Squire

Faculty Scholarship

In the course of damning the market giant Standard Oil, the Supreme Court declared that the purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Act is to prevent "monopoly and the acts which produce the same result as monopoly." The Constitution's Supremacy Clause, in turn, requires preemption-that is, non-enforcement--of state laws that conflict with a federal statute. Put together, these propositions suggest that state laws which create monopolies should be prime candidates for preemption via the Sherman Act. But despite the syllogistic logic bearing down on them, monopoly-creating state laws have easily weathered most federal antitrust challenges, even when the state does not …

Horizontal Agreements: Concept And Proof, George A. Hay

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It is well established that, absent some very special circumstances, agreements on price or certain other terms of trade by otherwise competing entities (i.e., "horizontal agreements") are unlawful per se under the Sherman Act. In practical effect, once the fact of the horizontal agreement has been established, an adverse impact on competition is presumed, and therefore that the plaintiff is spared the burden of proving such an impact. The principal task for plaintiffs in such cases, therefore, is establishing the existence of an agreement.

In the ideal world (from plaintiffs' perspective), there would be "hard" evidence of a "formal" agreement. …