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Can Covid-19 Get Congress To Finally Strengthen U.S. Antitrust Law?, Robert H. Lande, Sandeep Vaheesan
Can Covid-19 Get Congress To Finally Strengthen U.S. Antitrust Law?, Robert H. Lande, Sandeep Vaheesan
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The COVID-19 pandemic could cause Congress to strengthen our merger laws. The authors of this short article strongly urge Congress to do this, but to do this in a manner that ignores 5 myths that underpin current merger policy:
Myth 1: Mergers Eliminate Wasteful Redundancies and Produce More Efficient Businesses
Myth 2: Current Merger Enforcement Protects Consumers
Myth 3: Merger Remedies Preserve Competition
Myth 4: The Current Merger Review System Offers Transparency and Guidance to Businesses and the Public
Myth 5: Corporations Need Mergers to Grow
Submission Of Robert H. Lande To House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Investigation Of Digital Platforms, Robert H. Lande
Submission Of Robert H. Lande To House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Investigation Of Digital Platforms, Robert H. Lande
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The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee asked me to submit suggestions concerning the adequacy of existing antitrust laws, enforcement policies, and enforcement levels insofar as they impact the state of competition in the digital marketplace. My submission recommends the following nine reforms:
1. A textualist analysis of the Sherman Act shows that Section 2 actually is a no-fault monopolization statute. At a minimum Congress should enact a strong presumption that every firm with a 67% market share has violated Section 2. This would move the Sherman Act an important step in the right direction, the direction Congress intended in 1890. My …
Preventing The Curse Of Bigness Through Conglomerate Merger Legislation, Robert H. Lande, Sandeep Vaheesan
Preventing The Curse Of Bigness Through Conglomerate Merger Legislation, Robert H. Lande, Sandeep Vaheesan
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The antitrust laws, as they are presently interpreted, are incapable of blocking most of the very largest corporate mergers. They successfully blocked only 4 of the 61 largest finalized mergers and acquisitions (defined as the acquired firm being valued at more than $10 billion) that occurred between 2015 and 2018. The antitrust laws also would permit the first trillion-dollar corporation, Apple, to merge with the third largest corporation, Exxon/Mobil. In fact, today every U.S. corporation could merge until just 10 were left – so long as each owned only 10% of every relevant market.
Even though the Congresses that enacted …
The Sherman Act Is A No-Fault Monopolization Statute: A Textualist Demonstration, Robert H. Lande, Richard O. Zerbe Jr.
The Sherman Act Is A No-Fault Monopolization Statute: A Textualist Demonstration, Robert H. Lande, Richard O. Zerbe Jr.
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The drafters of the Sherman Act originally designed Section 2 to impose
sanctions on all monopolies and attempts to monopolize, regardless whether the
firm had engaged in anticompetitive conduct. This conclusion emerges from the
first ever textualist analysis of the language in the statute, a form of interpretation
originally performed only by Justice Scalia but now increasingly used by the
Supreme Court, including in its recent Bostock decision.
Following Scalia’s methodology, this Article analyzes contemporaneous
dictionaries, legal treatises, and cases and demonstrates that when the Sherman
Act was passed, the word “monopolize” simply meant that someone had acquired
a monopoly. …