Law Commons^™

Stakeholderism Silo Busting, Aneil Kovvali

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The fields of antitrust, bankruptcy, corporate, and securities law are undergoing tumultuous debates. On one side in each field is the dominant view that each field should focus exclusively on a specific constituency—antitrust on consumers, bankruptcy on creditors, corporate law on shareholders, and securities regulation on financial investors. On the other side is a growing insurgency that seeks to broaden the focus to a larger set of stakeholders, including workers, the environment, and political communities. But these conversations have largely proceeded in parallel, with each debate unfolding within the framework and literature of a single field. Studying these debates together …

President Biden's Executive Order On Competition: An Antitrust Analysis, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

In July, 2021, President Biden signed a far ranging Executive Order directed to promoting competition in the American economy. This paper analyzes issues covered by the Order that are most likely to affect the scope and enforcement of antitrust law. The only passage that the Executive Order quoted from a Supreme Court antitrust decision captures its antitrust ideology well – that the Sherman Act:

rests on the premise that the unrestrained interaction of competitive forces will yield the best allocation of our economic resources, the lowest prices, the highest quality and the greatest material progress, while at the same time …

A Miser’S Rule Of Reason: The Supreme Court And Antitrust Limits On Student Athlete Compensation, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The unanimous Supreme Court decision in NCAA v. Alston is its most important probe of antitrust’s rule of reason in decades. The decision implicates several issues, including the role of antitrust in labor markets, how antitrust applies to institutions that have an educational mission as well as involvement in a large commercial enterprise, and how much leeway district courts should have in creating decrees that contemplate ongoing administration.

The Court accepted what has come to be the accepted framework: the plaintiff must make out a prima facie case of competitive harm. Then the burden shifts to the defendant to produce …

Competition Policy For Labour Markets, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Competition law in many jurisdictions defines its consumer welfare goal in terms of low consumer prices. For example, mergers are challenged when they threaten to cause a price increase from reduced competition in the post-merger market. While the consumer welfare principle is under attack in some circles, it remains the most widely expressed goal of antitrust policy.

We would do better, however, to define consumer welfare in terms of output rather than price. Competition policy should strive to facilitate the highest output in any market that is consistent with sustainable competition. That goal is in most ways the same as …

No-Hire Provisions In Mcdonald's Franchise Agreements, An Antitrust Violations Or Evidence Of Joint Employer?, Andrele Brutus St. Val

Articles

As the archetypical franchisor and industry leader, McDonald’s has come under much public and legal scrutiny in recent years for its business practices and its effects on low-wage and unskilled employees. Its no hire provision—which is a term included in its franchise agreements with franchisees that bars franchisees from hiring each others employees—has been found by economist to suppress wages and stagnate growth. This provision is being challenged under antitrust law while its employment practices are being disputed under labor law. McDonald’s is defending its business practices by presenting two seemingly contradictory defenses. This article explores how McDonald’s position in …

Trade Openness And Antitrust Law, Anu Bradford, Adam S. Chilton

Faculty Scholarship

Openness to international trade and adoption of antitrust laws can both curb anti-competitive behavior. But scholars have long debated the relationship between the two. Some argue that greater trade openness makes antitrust unnecessary, while others contend that antitrust laws are still needed to realize the benefits of trade liberalization. Data limitations have made this debate largely theoretical to date. We study the relationship between trade and antitrust empirically using new data on antitrust laws and enforcement activities. We find that trade openness and stringency of antitrust laws are positively correlated from 1950 to 2010 overall, but the positive correlation disappears …

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 …

The Law Of The Platform, Orly Lobel

Faculty Scholarship

New digital platform companies are turning everything into an available resource: services, products, spaces, connections, and knowledge, all of which would otherwise be collecting dust. Unsurprisingly then, the platform economy defies conventional regulatory theory. Millions of people are becoming part-time entrepreneurs, disrupting established business models and entrenched market interests, challenging regulated industries, and turning ideas about consumption, work, risk, and ownership on their head. Paradoxically, as the digital platform economy becomes more established, we are also at an all-time high in regulatory permitting, licensing, and protection. The battle over law in the platform is therefore both conceptual and highly practical. …

What Brady V. N.F.L. Teaches About The Devolution Of Labor Law, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

In this essay I argue that the Eight Circuit got things very wrong when it found, in Brady v. National Football League, that a district court’s injunctions issued against the NFL in connection with player-filed antitrust suits were barred by the Norris LaGuardia Act of 1932 (NLGA). I argue that the Court’s misreading of the NLGA strikes at the “statutory music” of labor law so dramatically as to represent a judicial unmooring from it. I chronicle other recent important, but relatively minor, judicial departures from the music. I also discuss a major but less recent departure – the employer lockout. …

Danbury Hatters In Sweden: An American Perspective Of Employer Remedies For Illegal Collective Actions, César F. Rosado Marzán, Margot Nikitas

All Faculty Scholarship

The European Court of Justice's ("ECJ") Laval quartet held that worker collective actions that impacted freedom of services and establishment in the E.U. violated E.U. law. After Laval, the Swedish Labor Court imposed exemplary or punitive damages on labor unions for violating E.U. law. These cases have generated critical discussions regarding not only the proper balance between markets and workers’ freedom of association, but also what should be the proper remedies for employers who suffer illegal actions by labor unions under E.U. law. While any reforms to rebalance fundamental freedoms as a result of the Laval quartet will have to …

A Preface To Neoclassical Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Most legal historians speak of the period following classical legal thought as “progressive legal thought.” That term creates an unwarranted bias in characterization, however, creating the impression that conservatives clung to an obsolete “classical” ideology, when in fact they were in many ways just as revisionist as the progressives legal thinkers whom they critiqued. The Progressives and New Deal thinkers whom we identify with progressive legal thought were nearly all neoclassical, or marginalist, in their economics, but it is hardly true that all marginalists were progressives. For example, the lawyers and policy makers in the corporate finance battles of the …

Justice Sonia Sotomayor And The Relationship Between Leagues And Players: Insights And Implications, Michael Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s important role in shaping U.S. sports law. As a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and later on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Sotomayor authored opinions that resolved two major sports law disputes: whether Major League Baseball (“MLB”) owners could unilaterally impose new labor conditions on MLB players during the 1994 baseball strike and whether Ohio State University sophomore Maurice Clarett was obligated to wait three years from the completion of high school to become eligible for the National Football …

Fielding A Team For The Fans: The Societal Consequences And Title Vii Implications Of Race-Considered Roster Construction In Professional Sport, N. Jeremi Duru

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Professional sports organizations' relationships with their players are, like other employer-employee relationships, subject to scrutiny under the antidiscrimination mandates embedded in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Professional sports organizations are, however, unique among employers in many respects. Most notably, unlike other employers, professional sports organizations attract avid supporters who identify deeply with the teams and their players. To the extent an organization racially discriminates, therefore, such discrimination creates the risk that fans will identify with the homogenous or racially disproportionate roster that results. The consequences of such race-based team identification are wide-reaching and potentially tragic. Through …

Two Modern Antitrust Moments: A Comment On Fenton And Kwoka, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Multiemployer Bargaining, Antitrust Law, And Team Sports: The Contingent Choice Of A Broad Exemption, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

Twenty-four years after pronouncing that "Congress[ ,]... not... this Court[, must remedy] any inconsistency or illogic" in the long standing exemption of baseball, but not other sports from the reach of the antitrust laws,' the Supreme Court last term reduced substantially the uniqueness of Major League Baseball's control over its labor market. The Court did so not by exposing baseball to antitrust attack, but rather by clarifying that restrictions on player labor mobility and freedom of contract imposed by all North American leagues of professional sports teams² also enjoy an exemption from antitrust scrutiny as long as their labor …

Secondary Boycott: From Antitrust To Labor Relations, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

The ethos of the labor movement cuts against the American grain at several points. Our national instinct, reflected in many statutes and much judge-made law, is to exalt the rugged individualist over the anonymous group, to favor wide-open competition rather than a controlled market, and to prize the right of each person to remain aloof from the quarrels and concerns of his neighbors. It is not for nothing that our most universal folk hero is the frontiersman, who proudly stands alone and self-sufficient. Yet the ordinary workingman does not have the capacity to assume that heroic stance. For him strength …