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Full-Text Articles in Law
It’S About Lyme: Why Congress Must Enact Medical Insurance Coverage Laws For Lyme Disease Patients Now, Jennifer Barrett
It’S About Lyme: Why Congress Must Enact Medical Insurance Coverage Laws For Lyme Disease Patients Now, Jennifer Barrett
Seattle University Law Review Online
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates approximately 476,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease in the United States each year. While many will recover with a short course of antibiotics, up to 35% will suffer from persistent symptoms after initial treatment. Despite scientific evidence showing the infection can persist long after initial treatment, most insurance companies restrict access to treatment beyond twenty-eight days, leaving patients to bear much of the financial burden. To limit crippling out-of-pocket expenses, Congress must enact legislation mandating coverage for the treatment of clinically diagnosed Lyme disease and co-infections based on the International …
Antitrust And Two-Sided Platforms: The Failure Of American Express, John B. Kirkwood
Antitrust And Two-Sided Platforms: The Failure Of American Express, John B. Kirkwood
Faculty Articles
Two-sided platforms serve two sets of customers and enable them to interact with each other. The five most valuable corporations in America – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft – all operate two-sided platforms. But despite their growing power, the Supreme Court's American Express decision has made it harder to stop them from stifling competition. This Article systematically exposes the flaws in the Court's reasoning and identifies the principles that should govern future cases. The Court’s most fundamental error was to require plaintiffs in rule of reason cases to make an initial showing of consumer harm that weighs the effects …
Collusion To Control A Powerful Customer: Amazon, E-Books, And Antitrust Policy, John B. Kirkwood
Collusion To Control A Powerful Customer: Amazon, E-Books, And Antitrust Policy, John B. Kirkwood
Faculty Articles
A federal judge recently held that Apple violated antitrust law by conspiring with leading publishers to raise e-book prices. While the Justice Department characterized the case as routine, many commenters argued it should not have been brought. In their view, the real villain was Amazon, whose power and aggressive behavior threatened to create a monopoly, reduce consumer choice, and diminish the vitality of book publishing. In the face of such a powerful customer, the publishers should have been allowed to collude. This article addresses that issue, in the e-books case and in general. In the e-books case, collusion was almost …
The Essence Of Antitrust: Protecting Consumers And Small Suppliers From Anticompetitive Conduct, John B. Kirkwood
The Essence Of Antitrust: Protecting Consumers And Small Suppliers From Anticompetitive Conduct, John B. Kirkwood
Faculty Articles
The goals of antitrust law continue to be debated because there is no single goal that is unambiguously correct. There is one goal, however, that now commands wider support than any other: protecting consumers and small suppliers from anticompetitive conduct – conduct that creates market power, transfers wealth from consumers or small suppliers, and fails to provide them with compensating benefits. This goal is the predominant objective in the legislative histories, it is broadly supported by the American people, it is easier to administer than total welfare, and it is now espoused by the majority of courts. Proponents of total …
Rethinking Antitrust Policy Toward Rpm, John B. Kirkwood
Rethinking Antitrust Policy Toward Rpm, John B. Kirkwood
Faculty Articles
Resale price maintenance is a particularly dangerous vertical intrabrand restraint. Because of its direct impact on price competition, it is likely to harm consumers in a substantial number of cases. At the same time, RPM is likely to benefit consumers in a significant number of other cases. Given these mixed effects, the ideal legal standard would distinguish between those instances in which RPM is anticompetitive and those in which it is procompetitive. While Leegin thought that the full rule of reason could play this role, it did not acknowledge what every scholar who has looked at the issue has found-that …
The Path To Profitability: Reinvigorating The Neglected Phase Of Merger Analysis, Jack Kirkwood
The Path To Profitability: Reinvigorating The Neglected Phase Of Merger Analysis, Jack Kirkwood
Faculty Articles
This article reviews every litigated federal merger case since 1992, when the federal enforcement agencies revised the entry section of their merger guidelines. This review, unprecedented in the literature, shows that courts continue to neglect the entry phase of merger analysis, the phase that addresses whether, if the merged firm raised prices, new firms would enter the market and restore competition. In determining whether new entry is likely, most courts do not ask whether it would be profitable, but whether the market is protected by entry barriers. This “yes or no” approach is flawed, for all markets have some barriers …
The Fundamental Goal Of Antitrust: Protecting Consumers, Not Increasing Efficiency, Jack Kirkwood
The Fundamental Goal Of Antitrust: Protecting Consumers, Not Increasing Efficiency, Jack Kirkwood
Faculty Articles
This article defines the relevant economic concepts, summarizes the legislative histories, analyzes recent case law in more depth than any prior article, and explores the most likely bases for current popular support of the antitrust laws. All these factors indicate that the ultimate goal of antitrust is not to increase the total wealth of society, but to protect consumers from behavior that deprives them of the benefits of competition. When conduct presents a conflict between protecting consumers and improving the efficiency of the economy (e.g., a merger that raises prices but reduces costs), no court in recent years has chosen …
Beyond Eco-Imperialism: An Environmental Justice Critique Of Free Trade, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Beyond Eco-Imperialism: An Environmental Justice Critique Of Free Trade, Carmen G. Gonzalez
Faculty Articles
The article contributes to the trade and environment literature by assessing the claim that industrialized country proposals to integrate environmental protection into the WTO trade regime constitute environmental imperialism - the imposition of industrialized country values and preferences on less powerful nations. This claim is usually based on two distinct premises. The first is that environmental protection is a luxury that poor countries can ill afford. The second is that wealthy countries have played a leadership role in the protection of the global environment. The article questions these assumptions. It argues that environmental protection is essential to well-being of the …
Elimination Of The Conduct Requirement In Government Monopolization Cases, John B. Kirkwood, Alfred F. Dougherty, James D. Hurwitz
Elimination Of The Conduct Requirement In Government Monopolization Cases, John B. Kirkwood, Alfred F. Dougherty, James D. Hurwitz
Faculty Articles
On July 12, 1978, Professor John Flynn of the University of Utah Law School urged the National Commission for the Review of Antitrust Laws and Procedures (National Commission or NCRALP) to consider recommending that Congress amend section 2 of the Sherman Act to permit the government to challenge persistent and substantial monopoly power without showing that the monopoly power was acquired or maintained through objectionable conduct. In Professor Flynn's view, eliminating the prevailing conduct requirement in certain government monopolization cases would expedite litigation and produce more effective remedies, two of the National Commission's central objectives. First, this article explains that …
Child, Family And State: Problems And Materials On Childrenand The Law, Henry Mcgee
Child, Family And State: Problems And Materials On Childrenand The Law, Henry Mcgee
Faculty Articles
Professor McGee reviews THE ANTITRUST PARADOX: A POLICY AT WAR WITH ITSELF, by Robert H. Bork. Professor McGee argues that it would be easy to balance the allocative efficiency and the productive efficiency effects of various transactions if we could generate information for the economic models as easily as it is done in the model of perfect competition-simply by assuming it. Since information is costly in the real world, however, we must develop proxies or general rules, formed with the guidance of economic analysis, that seem likely to produce more good than harm as the law is applied to various …