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A Knowledge Theory Of Tacit Agreement, Wentong Zheng
A Knowledge Theory Of Tacit Agreement, Wentong Zheng
UF Law Faculty Publications
A persistent puzzle in antitrust law is whether and when an unlawful agreement could arise from conduct or verbalized communications that fall short of an explicit agreement. While courts have found such tacit agreements to exist in idiosyncratic scenarios, they have failed to articulate a clear and consistent logic for such findings. This Article attempts to fill this gap by proposing a unified theory of tacit agreement. It defines a tacit agreement as an agreement formed by non-explicit communications that enable the alleged coconspirators to have constructive knowledge of one another's conspiratory intent. This approach to tacit agreement is more …
Reinvigorating Criminal Antitrust?, D. Daniel Sokol
Reinvigorating Criminal Antitrust?, D. Daniel Sokol
UF Law Faculty Publications
Contemporary rhetoric surrounding antitrust in an age of populism has potential implications with regard to criminal antitrust enforcement. In areas such as resale price maintenance, monopolization, and Robinson-Patman violations, antitrust criminalization remains the law on the books. Antitrust populists and traditional antitrust thinkers who embrace a singular economic goal of antitrust push to enforce antitrust law that is already “on the books.” A natural extension of enforcement by the antitrust populists would be to advocate the use of criminal sanctions, outside of collusion, for various antitrust violations which are “on the books” but have not been used in over a …
Ohio V. American Express: Misunderstanding Two-Sided Platforms, The Charge Card 'Market,' And The Need For Procompetitive Justifications, Jeffrey L. Harrison
Ohio V. American Express: Misunderstanding Two-Sided Platforms, The Charge Card 'Market,' And The Need For Procompetitive Justifications, Jeffrey L. Harrison
UF Law Faculty Publications
In Ohio v. American Express Co., the United States Supreme Court had its first knowing encounter with what it incorrectly viewed as a two-sided platform in the context of American Express’ Non Disclosure Provisions (NDP). Under these provisions merchants accepting the American Express card for payment are not permitted to inform consumers that other cards charge merchants less for their use and that this could be reflected in the final price paid. The opinion includes poor reasoning, a lack of attention to precedent, and bad news for those who thought antitrust law was due for a revival. Yet, and perhaps …
Parker V. Brown, The Eleventh Amendment, And Anticompetitive State Regulation, William H. Page, John E. Lopatka
Parker V. Brown, The Eleventh Amendment, And Anticompetitive State Regulation, William H. Page, John E. Lopatka
UF Law Faculty Publications
The Parker v. Brown (or “state action”) doctrine and the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution impose differen limits on antitrust suits challenging anticompetitive state regulation. The Supreme Court has developed these two versions of state sovereign immunity separately, and lower courts usually apply the immunities independently of each another (even in the same cases) without explaining their relationship. Nevertheless, the Court has derived the two immunities from the same principle of sovereign immunity, so it is worth considering why and how they differ, and what the consequences of the differences are for antitrust policy. The state action immunity is based …