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Full-Text Articles in Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics
The Rule Of Reason, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The Rule Of Reason, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Antitrust’s rule of reason was born out of a thirty-year (1897-1927) division among Supreme Court Justices about the proper way to assess multi-firm restraints on competition. By the late 1920s the basic contours of the rule for restraints among competitors was roughly established. Antitrust policy toward vertical restraints remained much more unstable, however, largely because their effects were so poorly understood.
This article provides a litigation field guide for antitrust claims under the rule of reason – or more precisely, for situations when application of the rule of reason is likely. At the time pleadings are drafted and even up …
Antitrust Balancing, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Antitrust Balancing, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Antitrust litigation often confronts situations where effects point in both directions. Judges sometimes describe the process of evaluating these factors as “balancing.” In its e-Books decision the Second Circuit believed that the need to balance is what justifies application of the rule of reason. In Microsoft the D.C. Circuit stated that “courts routinely apply a…balancing approach” under which “the plaintiff must demonstrate that the anticompetitive harm…outweighs the procompetitive benefit.” But then it decided the case without balancing anything.
The term “balancing” is a very poor label for what courts actually do in these cases. Balancing requires that two offsetting effects …
Merger Settlement And Enforcement Policy For Optimal Deterrence And Maximum Welfare, Steven C. Salop
Merger Settlement And Enforcement Policy For Optimal Deterrence And Maximum Welfare, Steven C. Salop
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Merger enforcement today relies on settlements more than litigation to resolve anti-competitive concerns. The impact of settlement policy on welfare and the proper goals of settlement policy are highly controversial. Some argue that gun-shy agencies settle for too little while others argue that agencies use their power to delay to extract over-reaching settlement terms, even when mergers are not welfare-reducing. This article uses decision theory to throw light on this controversy. The goal of this article is to formulate and analyze agency merger enforcement and settlement commitment policies in the face of imperfect information, litigation costs, and delay risks by …