Law Commons^™

The Ncaa And The Rule Of Reason, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay considers the use of antitrust’s rule of reason in assessing challenges to rule making by the NCAA. In particular, it looks at the O’Bannon case, which involved challenges to NCAA rules limiting the compensation of student athletes under the NCAA rubric that protects the “amateur” status of collegiate athletes. Within that rubric, the Ninth Circuit got the right answer.

That outcome leads to a broader question, however: should the NCAA’s long held goal, frequently supported by the courts, of preserving athletic amateurism be jettisoned? Given the dual role that colleges play, that is a complex question, raising …

An Updated Quantitative Study Of Iqbal's Impact On 12(B)(6) Motions, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

The effect of Ashcroft v. Iqbal on pleading standards and behavior is a source of significant legal debate. This article serves as a follow-up to Professor Moore's 2010 empirical study on Iqbal's effect on courts' rulings on motions to dismiss complaints for failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Professor Moore's previous study found a statistically significant increase in the likelihood that a court grants a 12(b)(6) motion with leave to amend following Iqbal. In this article, Professor Moore updates and increases the pool of cases in her database. The updated data …

Shutting The Black Door: Using American Needle To Cure The Problem Of Improper Product Definition, Daniel A. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

Section 1 of the Sherman Act is designed to protect competition by making illegal any agreement that has the effect of limiting consumer choice. To make this determination, courts first define the product at issue and then consider the challenged restraint's impact on the market in which that product competes. When considering § 1 allegations against sports leagues, courts have tended to define products according to the structure of the leagues. The result of this tendency is that harm to competition between the leagues' teams is not properly accounted for in the courts' analyses. This, in turn, grants leagues a …

Toward A Unified Theory Of Exclusionary Vertical Restraints, Daniel A. Crane, Graciela Miralles

Articles

The law of exclusionary vertical restraints-contractual or other business relationships between vertically related firms-is deeply confused and inconsistent in both the United States and the European Union. A variety of vertical practices, including predatory pricing, tying, exclusive dealing, price discrimination, and bundling, are treated very differently based on formalistic distinctions that bear no relationship to the practices' exclusionary potential. We propose a comprehensive, unified test for all exclusionary vertical restraints that centers on two factors: foreclosure and substantiality. We then assign economic content to these factors. A restraint forecloses if it denies equally efficient rivals a reasonable opportunity to make …

Lorain, Aspen, And The Future Of Section 2 Enforcement, Xiao Jeff Liu

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Sherman Antitrust Act § 2 makes monopolizing or attempting to monopolize a particular trade or aspects of a trade a federal felony. More specifically, Section 2 of the Act addresses a firm's unilateral conduct. Under the administration of former President George W. Bush, a comprehensive guideline titled Competition and Monopoly: Single-Firm Conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act ("Bush Guidelines") was adopted in September of 2008 for enforcing Section 2 violations. Under President Barack Obama's administration, however, the enforcement of antitrust laws is expected to undergo a radical transformation. On May 11, 2009, Christine A. Varney, the Assistant …

Reflections On Section 5 Of The Ftc Act And The Ftc's Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC’s”) unprecedented enforcement action against Intel raises profound issues concerning the scope of the FTC’s powers to give a construction to Section 5 of the FTC Act that goes beyond the substantive reach of the Sherman Act. While I have urged the FTC to assert such independence from the Sherman Act, this is the wrong case to make a break. Indeed, if anything, Intel poses a risk of seriously setting back the development of an independent Section 5 power by provoking a hostile appellate court to rebuke the FTC’s effort and cabin the FTC’s powers in …

The Other Delegate: Judicially Administered Statutes And The Nondelegation Doctrine, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

The nondelegation doctrine is the subject of a vast and everexpanding body of scholarship. But nondelegation literature, like nondelegation law, focuses almost exclusively on delegations of power to administrative agencies. It ignores Congress's other delegate-the federal judiciary.

This Article brings courts into the delegation picture. It demonstrates that, just as agencies exercise a lawmaking function when they fill in the gaps left by broad statutory delegations of power, so too do courts. The nondelegation doctrine purports to limit the amount of lawmaking authority Congress can cede to another institution without violating the separation of powers. Although typically considered only with …

Keeping The Door Ajar For Foreign Plaintiffs In Global Cartel Cases After Empagran, Jeremy M. Suhr

Michigan Law Review

In many ways, the Supreme Court's opinion of F. Hoffmann-LaRoche Ltd. V. Empagran S.A. raised more questions than it answered. Growing out of the massive international vitamins cartel uncovered in the 1990s, Empagran presented a scenario in which all parties were foreign and all conduct occurred abroad. Although it is "well established by now that the Sherman Act applies to foreign conduct that was meant to produce and did in fact produce some substantial effect in the United States," Empagran presented the Court with the first truly foreign antitrust case. It involved not only foreign conduct, but also foreign plaintiffs …

Sherman's March (In)To The Sea, Andrew S. Oldham

ExpressO

This Article argues that the Sherman Act is unconstitutional. At the very least, scholars and jurists must not take for granted Congress's ability to statutorily deputize the federal courts with common-lawmaking powers. The federal antitrust statute—which has been described as the Magna Carta of free enterprise—raises serious constitutional questions that have heretofore gone unexplored and unanswered. Specifically, it is difficult (if not impossible) to reconcile the Sherman Act with the separation of powers, the nondelegation doctrine, and the Supremacy Clause.

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.

Goldwasser, The Telecom Act, And Reflections On Antitrust Remedies, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Antitrust And The Information Age: Section 2 Monopolization Analyses In The New Economy, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

On April 3, 2000, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared that the Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") had maintained monopoly power in the personal computer operating system market by anticompetitive means, in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. A case of enormous significance, Microsoft raises difficult questions regarding how antitrust laws should be applied to information technology ("IT') companies. Specifically, many characteristics of what has come to be called the "New Economy" - and of the IT companies within it - suggest that traditional monopolization analysis may need modification. As the U.S. has moved toward an information- based …

The Legal Culture Of The Formative Period In Sherman Act Jurisprudence, William P. Lapiana

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Workable Antitrust Law: The Statutory Approach To Antitrust, Thomas Arthur

Faculty Articles

This Article will demonstrate the superiority of the statutory approach for producing more stable and consistent antitrust law. Part I details the development of the constitutional approach to antitrust, demonstrating how the rise of the pragmatic and instrumentalist view of law led to the displacement of the original statutory approach to antitrust. Part II illustrates that the constitutional approach fundamentally cannot produce workable antitrust law. It summarizes both the doctrinal disarray that continues to plague each major area of antitrust law and the irreconcilable policy prescriptions of the contending antitrust "schools." Part III presents an alternative, statutory approach to antitrust …

Rent Control Price Fixing: Another Look At The Emperor's New Clothes, Robert N. Markle

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Farewell To The Sea Of Doubt: Jettisoning The Constitutional Sherman Act, Thomas C. Arthur

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I examines the legislative history of the Sherman Act to discover the policy choices actually made by the 1890 Congress. Part II sketches the development, operation and social costs of the conventional "constitutional" approach which now dominates section 1 adjudication. This Part demonstrates how the Supreme Court's failure to establish a workable methodology for resolving hard cases in the first Sherman Act decisions enabled it later to create the myth that the 1890 Congress made no hard policy choices. It then shows that the lack of a recognized statutory standard inevitably leads to doctrinal …

The Arbitrability Of Domestic Antitrust Claims: An Evaluation Of The American Safety Doctrine, Edward G. Heilig

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Failing Companies And The Antitrust Laws, Janet L. Mcdavid

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article will examine two areas in which the courts have given financially-troubled companies special treatment under the antitrust laws. Part I discusses the acquisition of a failing company, which may constitute a judicially-created exemption from section 7 of the Clayton Act. Part II considers certain cases involving failing companies whose conduct is challenged under section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Connell: Antitrust Law At The Expense Of Labor Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

From the outset, the difficulty in applying the antitrust concept to organized labor has been that the two are intrinsically incompatible. The antitrust laws are designed to promote competition, and unions, avowedly and unabashedly, are designed to limit it. According to classical trade union theory, the objective is the elimination of wage competition among all employees doing the same job in the same industry. Logically extended, the policy against restraint of trade must condemn the very existence of labor organizations, since their minimum aim has always been the suppression of any inclination on the part of working people to offer …

The Antitrust Expediting Act- A Critical Reappraisal, Robert C. Bonges

Michigan Law Review

The Expediting Act has been subject to some rather severe criticism from the bench and bar. At the extreme, it has been suggested that the act be repealed and the procedure for appealing government civil antitrust cases be completely overhauled. Even proponents of the act have acknowledged its need of revision, but there is little agreement among them on the extent and nature of desirable change. This comment will explore the origins, development, and current role of the Expediting Act in order to help determine what course revision, if it is needed, should follow.

Conflict Of Laws-Law Applicable In Federal Courts-Federal Law Applied To Contractual Relations Of Admiralty Lawyer, Robert E. Thorne S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff attorney was retained by a Spanish seaman to prosecute personal injury claims under the Jones Act and the general maritime law. Defendant shipping company induced the seaman to fire his lawyer and to recover instead under his Spanish employment contract. Plaintiff sued the shipping company in tort for interference with contractual relations. In a federal diversity suit, held, for plaintiff. Federal common law should be applied to determine the validity of the contract and the claim of tortious interference with it. Greenberg v. Panama Transp. Co., 185 F. Supp. 320 (D. Mass. 1960).

Congressional Silence And The Supreme Court

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Standard Oil Decision: The Rule Of Reason, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

After twenty-one years the Sherman Anti Trust Act has been applied to the typical combination restraining interstate commerce, which that act was designed to prevent.