Law Commons^™

Wickard Through An Antitrust Lens, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

The Market Power Model Of Contract Formation: How Outmoded Economic Theory Still Distorts Antitrust Doctrine, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

Transaction cost economics ("TCE") has radically altered industrial organization's explanation for so-called "non-standard contracts, "including "exclusionary" agreements that exclude rivals from access to inputs or customers. According to TCE, such integration usually reduces transaction costs without producing anticompetitive harm. TCE has accordingly exercised growing influence over antitrust doctrine, with courts invoking TCE's teachings to justify revision of some doctrines once hostile to such contracts. Still, old habits die hard, even for courts of increasing economic sophistication. This Article critiques one such habit, namely, courts'continuing claim that firms use market or monopoly power to impose exclusionary contracts on unwilling trading partners. …

Standard Oil As Lochner's Trojan Horse, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Section 2 Enforcement And The Great Recession: Why Less (Enforcement) Might Mean More (Gdp), Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

The Great Recession has provoked calls for more vigorous regulation in all sectors, including antitrust enforcement. After President Obama took office, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice abandoned the Bush Administration’s standard of liability under section 2 of the Sherman Act, which forbids unlawful monopolization, as insufficiently interventionist. Based on the premise that similarly lax antitrust enforcement caused and deepened the Great Depression, the Obama Administration outlined a more intrusive and consumer-focused approach to section 2 enforcement as part of a larger national strategy to combat the “extreme” economic crisis the nation was then facing.

This Essay draws …

Regulation Of Franchisor Opportunism And Production Of The Institutional Framework: Federal Monopoly Or Competition Between The States?, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

Most scholars would agree that a merger between General Motors and Ford should not be judged solely by Delaware corporate law, even if both firms are incorporated in Delaware. Leaving the standards governing such mergers to state law would assuredly produce a race to the bottom that would result in unduly permissive treatment of such transactions. Similarly, if the two firms agreed to divide markets, most would agree that some regulatory authority other than Michigan or Delaware should have the final word on the agreement. Thus, in order to forestall monopoly or its equivalent, the national government must itself exercise …

Monopolization, Exclusion, And The Theory Of The Firm, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Liberty And Antitrust In The Formative Era, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Justice Scalia And Sherman Act Textualism, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Intrabrand Restraints And The Theory Of The Firm, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

In Praise Of All Or Nothing Dichotomous Categories: Why Antitrust Law Should Reject The Quick Look, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Don't Disintegrate Microsoft (Yet), Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Exclusive Dealing, The Theory Of The Firm, And Raising Rivals' Costs: Toward A New Synthesis, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Debunking The Purchaser Welfare Account Of Section 2 Of The Sherman Act: How Harvard Brought Us A Total Welfare Standard And Why We Should Keep It, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

The last several years have seen a vigorous debate among antitrust scholars and practitionersa bout the appropriates tandardf or evaluating the conduct of monopolists under section 2 of the Sherman Act. While most of the debate over possible standards has focused on the empirical question of each standard's economic utility, this Article undertakes a somewhat different task: It examines the normative benchmark that courts have actually chosen when adjudicating section 2 cases. This Article explores three possible benchmarks-producer welfare, purchaser welfare, and total welfare-and concludes that courts have opted for a total welfare normative approach to section 2 since the …

Competition Policy And The Great Depression: Lessons Learned And A New Way Forward, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

The recent Great Recession has shaken the nation’s faith in free markets and inspired various forms of actual or proposed regulatory intervention displacing free competition. Proponents of such intervention often claim that such interference with free-market outcomes will help foster economic recovery and thus macroeconomic stability by, for instance, enhancing the “purchasing power” of workers or reducing consumer prices. Such arguments for increased economic centralization echo those made during the Great Depression, when proponents of regulatory intervention claimed that such interference with economic liberty and free competition, including suspension of the antitrust laws, was necessary to foster economic recovery. Indeed, …

Antitrust Federalism And State Restraints Of Interstate Commerce: An Essay For Herbert Hovenkamp, Alan J. Meese

Alan J. Meese

No abstract provided.

Taking Antitrust Away From The Courts, Ganesh Sitaraman

Ganesh Sitaraman

A small number of firms hold significant market power in a wide variety of sectors of the economy, leading commentators across the political spectrum to call for a reinvigoration of antitrust enforcement. But the antitrust agencies have been surprisingly timid in response to this challenge, and when they have tried to assert themselves, they have often found that hostile courts block their ability to foster competitive markets. In other areas of law, Congress delegates power to agencies, agencies make regulations setting standards, and courts provide deferential review after the fact. Antitrust doesn’t work this way. Courts – made up of …

Making Meaning: Towards A Narrative Theory Of Statutory Interpretation And Judicial Justification, Randy D. Gordon

Randy D. Gordon

The act of judging is complex involving finding facts, interpreting law, and then deciding a particular dispute. But these are not discreet functions: they bleed into one another and are thus interdependent. This article aims to reveal-at least in part-how judges approach this process. To do so, I look at three sets of civil RICO cases that align and diverge from civil antitrust precedents. I then posit that the judges in these cases base their decisions on assumptions about RICO's purpose. These assumptions, though often tacit and therefore not subject to direct observation, are nonetheless sometimes revealed when a judge …

Player Restraints And Competition Law Throughout The World, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

This article reviews agreements among clubs participating in league sports in many countries throughout the world that limit competition for the services of players. Under the English common law (which governs in most of the British commonwealth), the competition law provisions of the European Union's governing treaty, the American Sherman Act, and the Canadian Competition Act, the governing standard is quite similar. Player restraints cab only be justified if they are related to a legitimate purpose, which is usually defined as one that demonstrably improves the consumer appeal for the sporting competition. Moreover, and significantly, player restraints must be reasonably …

Monopoly Sports Leagues, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

This Article argues that the government should break up both Major League Baseball and the NFL to provide for competing economic entities in each sport. Part I details the harm monopoly sports leagues cause in several different markets and explains why a competitive league structure can correct such harms. Part II discusses why regulatory solutions are poor substitutes for competition as a means of redressing these harms. Part III explains why neither baseball nor football is a "natural monopoly" and argues that no persuasive evidence suggests that rival leagues cannot exist in those sports. Part IV examines how the antitrust …

The Misunderstood Alliance Between Sports Fans, Players, And The Antitrust Laws, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

The baseball strike and the ongoing hostilities between the players' association and owners have evoked criticism and frustration among fans and others. Although the players successfully defeated the owners' most recent attempts to reduce major league competition, the threat of future imposition of competitive restraints by the owners remains. In this article Professor Stephen F. Ross argues that blanket restraints on the market for players affirmatively inhibit on-the-field competition and consequently offend the Sherman Act. The article begins with the proposition that monopsony - price-fixing behavior by buyers', rather than sellers' cartels - implicates the Sherman Act. Restraints on competition …

Reconsidering Flood V. Kuhn, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

Within the academia, two very different groups of legal scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to Flood v. Kuhn. Those specializing in sports law have either attached Flood as a ridiculous decision that improperly distinguished between baseball and other professional sports, or have praised it for waging guerrilla warfare on the idea that Section 1 of the Sherman Act should apply to intra-league arrangements by owners of the professional sports teams. Those viewing Flood through the lens of statutory interpretation perceive the decision as adhering rigidly to the principle of stare decisis; this rigidity has been both praised …

An Antitrust Analysis Of Sports League Contracts With Cable Networks, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

This Article discusses the proper antitrust treatment of package sales to cable. Part I considers whether the antitrust laws apply at all to such sales; it concludes that section one of the Sherman Act does apply and that neither the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 not baseball's historic exemption from the antitrust laws prevents antitrust scrutiny of these contracts. Part II explains why cable package sales should be analyzed under a rule of reason test focused on the effect of a sale on fan viewership. Finally, Part III responds to several possible objections to the rule of reason standard proposed …

Accommodating Labor And Antitrust, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

In this article, the author comments on Professor Michael LeRoy's article "Federal Jurisdiction in Sports Labor Disputes" (2012 Utah L. Rev. 815) and explains why he disagrees with the claim that federal courts improperly invoke the Sherman Act in sports labor disputes.

A Rapid Reaction To O'Bannon: The Need For Analytics In Applying The Sherman Act To Overly Restrictive Joint Venture Schemes, Stephen Ross, Wayne Desarbo

Stephen F Ross

This Article reviews the recent and highly publicized district court decision holding that NCAA rules, which bar student-athletes from any compensation for image rights, violated the Sherman Act, and that big-time athletic programs could lawfully agree among themselves to limit compensation to $5,000 annually in trust for each athlete upon leaving school. This Article briefly discusses why the decision correctly found the current rule to be illegal, but also details why, under settled antitrust law, the critical question of how much compensation would significantly harm consumer appeal for college football and basketball is a question better left to marketing science …

Measuring Compliance With Compulsory Licensing Remedies In The American Microsoft Case, William Page, Seldon Childers

William H. Page

Section III.E of the final judgments in the American Microsoft case requires Microsoft to make available to software developers certain communications protocols that Windows client operating systems use to interoperate with Microsoft's server operating systems. This provision has been by far the most difficult and costly to implement, primarily because of questions about the quality of Microsoft's documentation of the protocols. The plaintiffs' technical experts, in testing the documentation, have found numerous issues, which they have asked Microsoft to resolve. Because of accumulation of unresolved issues, the parties agreed in 2006 to extend Section III.E for up to five more …

A Neo-Chicago Approach To Concerted Action, William H. Page

William H. Page

In this article, I offer an approach to concerted action that builds on traditional Chicago School analyses of the issue, but adds a focus on the role of communication. Chicago scholars uniformly identify cartels as the primary target of antitrust enforcement. They have also established much of the framework within which courts and economists analyze concerted action. George Stigler’s seminal theory of oligopoly, which sought to identify the determinants of effective collusion, has spawned an enormous literature in game theory that models the pricing behavior of oligopolists. Richard Posner’s early analysis of tacit collusion - rivals’ coordination of noncompetitive pricing …

The Ftc's Procedural Advantage In Discovering Concerted Action, William H. Page

William H. Page

Scholars have long argued that Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act can or should be interpreted to reach more conduct than Section 1 of Sherman Act - whether, in other words, there are gaps in the coverage of Section 1 that allow certain forms of anticompetitive conduct that Section 5 should condemn. Perhaps the most important issue in the interpretation of Section 1 concerns how courts should distinguish conscious parallelism from unlawful concerted action. In this paper, I argue that there is no substantive gap between the two antitrust statutes on this issue-both statutes prohibit (and permit) the …

Innovations In Antitrust Enforcement, George A. Hay

George A. Hay

Each antitrust administration, both at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, has its theme—one or a few areas of antitrust enforcement that it wants to pay particular attention to and in that way be identified with. And, as part of this emphasis, administrations often seek to innovate in some way or another, to do something different, or in a different way than previous administrations. One factor stimulating innovation in antitrust enforcement is simply that new people with new ideas come into a new job. Sometimes those new people bring with them ideas that they had been developing …

Oligopoly, Shared Monopoly, And Antitrust Law, George A. Hay

George A. Hay

No abstract provided.

Horizontal Agreements: Concept And Proof, George A. Hay

George A. Hay

It is well established that, absent some very special circumstances, agreements on price or certain other terms of trade by otherwise competing entities (i.e., "horizontal agreements") are unlawful per se under the Sherman Act. In practical effect, once the fact of the horizontal agreement has been established, an adverse impact on competition is presumed, and therefore that the plaintiff is spared the burden of proving such an impact. The principal task for plaintiffs in such cases, therefore, is establishing the existence of an agreement.

In the ideal world (from plaintiffs' perspective), there would be "hard" evidence of a "formal" agreement. …