Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Optimizing Private Antitrust Enforcement, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Private litigation is the predominant means of antitrust enforcement in the United States. Other jurisdictions around the world are increasingly implementing private enforcement models. Private enforcement is usually justified on either compensation or deterrence grounds. While the choice between these two goals matters, private litigation is not very effective at advancing either one. Compensation fails because the true economic victims of most antitrust violations are usually downstream consumers who are too numerous and remote to locate and compensate. Deterrence is ineffective because the time lag between the planning of the violation and the legal judgment day is usually so long …

Did We Avoid Historical Failures Of Antitrust Enforcement During The 2008-2009 Financial Crisis?, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

During both economic crises and wars, times of severe national anxiety, antitrust has taken a back seat to other political and regulatory objectives. Antitrust enforcement has often been a political luxury good, consumed only during periods of relative peace and prosperity. In 1890, the Sherman Act's adoption kicked off the era of national antitrust enforcement. Barely three years later, the panic of 1893 provided the first major test to the national appetite for antitrust enforcement. Perhaps 1893 should not be included in the story: antitrust was still young, and it was not even clear that the Sherman Act applied to …

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 …

Lessons For Competition Law From The Economic Crisis: The Prospect For Antitrust Responses To The 'Too-Big-To-Fail' Phenomenon, Jesse Markham

Jesse Markham

This article explores the failure of antitrust law to prevent or intercede to remedy the catastrophic failures of large enterprises. Given the historic focus of antitrust on problems relating to the dangers of out-sized business enterprise, the failure of antitrust in this regard raises interesting questons about whether its mission has drifted from the law's original intent. The article explores the current relationship between antitrust rules and "bigness" and offers a modest proposal for reviving antitrust as a public policy tool that might help to address the too-big-to-fail phenomenon.

A Strategy For Cooperation In Global Competition Policy, Andrew Guzman

Andrew T Guzman

No abstract provided.

The Essential Facilities Doctrine Before European Community Courts: Ostracised Or Expanded?, Anastasios Antoniou

Anastasios A. Antoniou

No abstract provided.

D Is For Digitize: An Introduction, James Grimmelmann

James Grimmelmann

This brief introductory essay reviews the history of D is for Digitize conference on the Google Books settlement and provides an overview of the seven articles in the symposium issue.

Monitoring Managers Through Corporate Compliance Programs, Charles Angelucci, Martijn Han

Martijn A. Han

Compliance programs entail monitoring of employees' behavior with the claimed objective of fighting corporate crime. (Competition) Authorities promote such intra-firm monitoring. In a three-tier hierarchy model, authority-shareholder-manager, we study the impact of monitoring through a compliance program on contracting within the firm and the authority's optimal sanctions and leniency policy. We find that compliance programs are beneficial in the fight against corporate crime if and only if the managerial sanction is low. Moreover, when the shareholder blows the whistle, the authority optimally grants partial corporate leniency, while not granting individual leniency to the involved employees. Conversely, when the employee blows …

Of Vulnerable Monopolists?: Questionable Innovation In The Standard For Class Certification In Antitrust Cases, Joshua P. Davis, Eric L. Cramer

Joshua P. Davis

Some courts appear to have begun to revise the standard for granting class certification, including in antitrust cases. The new standard, if there is one, may empower courts to find facts relevant to the merits in a way that historically they have not been permitted to do. If courts are ratcheting up the standard at class certification by forcing plaintiffs to make a showing on the merits, then it seems an unfortunate development for various reasons. First, the rationale for the change is unsubstantiated and implausible. Neither theory nor evidence supports the claim that corporations settle meritless class actions with …

Three Takes On Global Justice, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

No abstract provided.

Setting Aside An Arbitration Award, Fernando Leila

Fernando Leila

I - Facts Most arbitration rules stipulate that the arbitral awards that result from arbitration under those agreements or rules are ‘final.’ Yet there is almost always the possibility for a party to challenge the award, whether or not the parties have agreed. According to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”), a successful challenge will usually result in the award being ‘set aside,’ ‘vacated,’ or’ annulled,’ and therefore ceasing to exist, at least within the jurisdiction of the court setting it aside. To set aside an award means to 'declare the award to be disregarded in whole …

Expansion And Contraction In Monopolization Law, Michal Gal, Spencer Waller Weber, Avishalom Tor

Avishalom Tor

This article introduces a special symposium issue of the Antitrust Law Journal based on a conference on monopolization. It argues that monopolization law has been experiencing simultaneous expansion and contraction processes that are not wholly contradictory but at least partly complementary. Specifically, the authors suggest that the contraction of monopolization law in the United States and the EU might serve to facilitate its expansion and increased importance worldwide, providing other antitrust regimes with more focused and effective tools to address the challenges involved in regulating dominant firms. Moreover, monopolization law's increased reach internationally also has made its refinement and rationalization …

Case Comment Solvay C-57/01 Top Slices Rebates, Emanuela A. Matei

Emanuela A. Matei

The case concerns top-slices rebates, as abusive practices under 102(2)(b) and 102(2)(c)TFEU. The judgment is in line with the previous case-law, reinforcing that a dominant undertaking has a special responsibility not to eliminate the residual competition. Solvay’s arguments that support the pleas on the absence of a dominant position and of an abuse and concern the structure of its production costs are rejected by the Court. As to the procedural part, the absence of repeated infringements is established by the Court in its finding that collusion and abuse of dominance are not similar types of infringements.

Antitrust, Class Certification, And The Politics Of Procedure, Joshua P. Davis, Eric L. Cramer

Joshua P. Davis

This Article develops two arguments against a possible trend in federal appellate courts toward imposing a new, heightened standard for class certification in antitrust cases. Recent case law can be read to imply that trial judges may make findings of fact on the merits in deciding class certification, including about whether plaintiffs will be able to show with class-wide evidence that every class member was harmed by allegedly anticompetitive conduct. The first argument is that the potential new standard would require a showing at class certification on an issue—whether all class members were injured—that plaintiffs need not, and typically do …

The Missing Link Of Democracy, Fernando Leila

Fernando Leila

The Missing Link of Democracy: The Federal Reserve Submission to the Democratic Government

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the "business cycle") the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Thomas Jefferson

Abstract

This paper examines the shortcomings of the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) as an institution, its power and policy under a democratic system of government, and the consequences thereof.

America is in …

Fixing Merger Litigation "Fixes": Reforming The Litigation Of Proposed Merger Remedies Under Section 7 Of The Clayton Act, Thomas J. Horton

Thomas J. Horton

No abstract provided.

El Procedimiento Administrativo Y Las Facultades De La Autoridad En Materia De Represión De La Competencia Desleal. Apuntes Sobre El Decreto Legislativo N° 1044, Pierino Stucchi

Pierino Stucchi

No abstract provided.

Da Ilicitude Como Uma Das Belas Artes, Victor J. Calvete

Victor J. Calvete

Main Points: - Economic law is prone to change: as Bernard Mandeville put it in 1705, "Their laws and cloths were equally/ Objects of mutability;/ for what was well done for a time,/ in half a year became a crime;" - If that is broadly so, it is even more so in what concerns a number of economic actions that fall under the antitrust laws, namely, Resale Price Maintenance (RPM); - The story of RPM in the USA is so full of U-turns that leaves your head spinning; and even if you cut that long story short, its "legal technicality" …

O Controlo Jurisdicional Da Actividade Da Autoridade Da Concorrência, Victor J. Calvete

Victor J. Calvete

Actions - and omissions - of the Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC) are bound to be reviewed by the courts, if parties injured so decide. However, the legal framework that provides for that review is somehow complex - and the more so after Law n.º 52/2008, of August 28, changed the powers of the Commercial Courts. The ensuing analysis predates those changes (accounted for in the final version), and provides a comprehensive guide of the different paths to be followed in reaction to the actions/omissions of the AdC, as well as cautionary warnings on some of the traps along the way.

Framing Franchise In Antitrust Litigation-The Legacy Of Kodak And Queen City Pizza.Pdf, Randy D. Gordon

Randy D. Gordon

Crisis And Coordination: Regulatory Design In Financial Crises (Asil Proceedings, 2010), Robert B. Ahdieh

Robert B. Ahdieh

Normative Dynamics Of Competition Laws, Piyabutr Bunaramrueang

piyabutr bunaramrueang

This article aims at providing a review on normative dynamics of competition laws. Although legal norms seem to be very stable, those norms governing economic activities are changing relatively fast. It is therefore an attempt to illustrate dynamic quality of laws by using competition laws as a major example of laws governing economic activities. I would like to discuss mainly over U.S. antitrust laws as the major model of competition laws, perhaps, for all other countries pursuing economic growth of free market. The dynamic quality of U.S. antitrust laws is essentially derived from its legal tradition that invites legal reasoning …