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Antitrust and Trade Regulation

Michigan Law Review

Journal

Consumers

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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Law

Standing In The Way Of The Ftaia: Exceptional Applications Of Illinois Brick, Jennifer Fischell Oct 2015

Standing In The Way Of The Ftaia: Exceptional Applications Of Illinois Brick, Jennifer Fischell

Michigan Law Review

In 1982, Congress enacted the Foreign Antitrust Trade Improvements Act (FTAIA) to resolve uncertainties about the international reach and effect of U.S. antitrust laws. Unfortunately, the FTAIA has provided more questions than answers. It has been ten years since the Supreme Court most recently interpreted the FTAIA, and crucial questions and circuit splits abound. One of these questions is how to understand the convergence of the direct purchaser rule (frequently referred to as the Illinois Brick doctrine) and the FTAIA. Under the direct purchaser rule, only those who purchase directly from antitrust violators are typically permitted to sue under section …


The Case For Rebalancing Antitrust And Regulation, Howard A. Shelanski Jan 2011

The Case For Rebalancing Antitrust And Regulation, Howard A. Shelanski

Michigan Law Review

The continued growth of forensic DNA databases has brought about greater interest in a search method known as "familial" or "kinship" matching. Whereas a typical database search seeks the source of a crime-scene stain by making an exact match between a known person and the DNA sample, familial searching instead looks for partial matches in order to find potential relatives of the source. The use of a familial DNA search to identify the alleged "Grim Sleeper" killer in California brought national attention to the method, which has many proponents. In contrast, this Article argues against the practice of familial searching …


The Hidden Roles Of Boilerplate And Standard-Form Contracts: Strategic Imposition Of Transaction Costs, Segmentation Of Consumers, And Anticompetitive Effects, David Gilo, Ariel Porat Mar 2006

The Hidden Roles Of Boilerplate And Standard-Form Contracts: Strategic Imposition Of Transaction Costs, Segmentation Of Consumers, And Anticompetitive Effects, David Gilo, Ariel Porat

Michigan Law Review

Standard-form contracts offered to consumers contain numerous terms and clauses, most of which are ancillary to the main terms of the transaction. We call these ancillary terms "boilerplate provisions." Since most consumers do not read boilerplate provisions or, if they do, find them hard to understand, courts are suspicious of boilerplate provisions and sometimes find them unenforceable under the doctrine of unconscionability. At times, courts conclude that harsh terms have not been accepted by consumers in the first place and therefore are not included in the contract, and on other occasions courts interpret boilerplate provisions in favor of consumers, applying …


The Boilerplate Puzzle, Douglas G. Baird Mar 2006

The Boilerplate Puzzle, Douglas G. Baird

Michigan Law Review

The warranty that comes with your laptop computer is one of its many product attributes. The laptop has a screen of a particular size. Its microprocessors work at a particular speed, and the battery lasts a given amount of time between recharging. The hard drive has a certain capacity and mean time to failure. There is an instruction manual, online technical support (or lack thereof), and software. Then there are the warranties that the seller makes (or does not make) that are also part of the bundle. Just as I know the size of the screen, but nothing about the …


Consumer Beware Chicago, Eleanor M. Fox Aug 1986

Consumer Beware Chicago, Eleanor M. Fox

Michigan Law Review

Professor Hovenkamp's article, Antitrust Policy After Chicago, reveals an important truth. Chicago School economics does not provide a superior roadmap to efficiency. I would take the critique one step further and assert: The main gap between Chicago and its critics is not even the design of the roadmap to efficiency. The main gap is social and political philosophy.


Rhetoric And Skepticism In Antitrust Argument, Herbert Hovenkamp Aug 1986

Rhetoric And Skepticism In Antitrust Argument, Herbert Hovenkamp

Michigan Law Review

In his essay on Workable Antitrust Policy Judge Easterbrook professes an extraordinary skepticism about economic models in general, and particularly about the ability of courts to use economic models to distinguish the competitive from the anticompetitive. But a profession of skepticism is itself a very powerful rhetorical device; it creates a perception of tough-mindedness, of refusal to yield real-world observations to analytic models or other abstractions, of extreme reluctance to accept any proposition that has not been clearly proven. Further, it is always very easy to be a skeptic, because every position ever taken except perhaps for a few tautologies …


Workable Antitrust Policy, Frank H. Easterbrook Aug 1986

Workable Antitrust Policy, Frank H. Easterbrook

Michigan Law Review

One of the schools of thought in the economics of antitrust was called "workable competition." The adherents to this school believed that markets were prone to cartelization and that concentration was death on competition, but that occasionally competition might prove "workable." These scholars were suspicious of almost every industrial practice they saw. One of the manifestations of their work came to be known as the "structure-conduct-performance paradigm." The thesis was that you could tell whether competition was feasible from the structure of the market. If the top four firms had fifty percent or so of the sales, we should abandon …