Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

It’S Getting Too “Messi”: The Pending Litigation That Should Lead Major League Soccer To Finally Abandon Its Single Entity Structure, Aaron Glas

University of Miami Law Review

Despite being the most popular sport worldwide, soccer has never attained that level of popularity in the United States, lagging significantly behind sports like football, basketball, and baseball. Major League Soccer (“MLS”) was founded in 1995 in an effort to establish a viable, long-term professional soccer league in the United States. It was structured as a single entity to keep costs low, promote an even playing field, and avoid costly antitrust suits brought by its players. The United States Soccer Federation (“USSF”) helped insulate the league from competition in its infancy, but MLS is now a completely different league from …

Religious Riders And The Sherman Act, Bailey Sanders

Michigan Law Review

Can corporations engage in anticompetitive behavior on the basis of religious belief? While the answer may seem like an obvious no, in fact this question has largely been overlooked. It has hovered at the margins of the debate over religious exemptions: Proponents of religious exemptions have essentially argued that there is no harm in providing such exemptions to businesses because a competitive market will ensure consumers who might be denied services or goods by a religious firm can still obtain those goods and services elsewhere. But what if religiously minded businesses act in ways that are specifically designed to limit …

Valentine Act And Sherman Act: Separate And Distinct Antitrust Regimes, Thomas J. Collin

Cleveland State Law Review

The Ohio Supreme Court has held that the Valentine Act was patterned after the Sherman Act and should be interpreted in light of federal court interpretations of the Sherman Act. The Court was wrong, and its error persists. With the exception of a private right of action provision and a borrowed definition, nothing in the Valentine Act was derived from the Sherman Act. The holding ignores text and legislative history and has foreclosed development of any independent jurisprudence for a statute intended by the General Assembly to address grave antitrust abuses. This Article analyzes the Court’s error, details the origins …

The Essence Of An Antitrust Violation, Thomas A. Lambert

Faculty Publications

Judicial embrace of the consumer welfare standard reduced the indeterminacy and political manipulability of U.S. antitrust law. Continual invocations of antitrust’s consumer welfare focus, however, have created the misimpression that consumer harm is a sufficient, not merely a necessary, condition for condemning antitrust-relevant behaviors like agreements in restraint of trade and exclusion-causing unilateral acts. Such a “consumer harm sufficiency” view underlay the plaintiffs’ claims in Epic Games v. Apple and FTC v. Qualcomm and has inspired scholarly proposals to condemn various antitrust-relevant behaviors simply because they occasion consumer harm.

Antitrust economics and dynamic efficiency considerations call for rejection of the …

Ftc V. Amazon: A Turning Point For Antitrust Law?, Matthew Cole Conover

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The United States is experiencing crippling economic inequalities that harken back to the Gilded Age. For the first time, legal scholars have turned to antitrust law to reverse this alarming trend. These scholars, including current Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, are testing this ambitious theory in the E-commerce industry. E-commerce is a market largely dominated by one company: Amazon. With its dominance, Amazon lures small businesses into its third-party seller marketplace, where it controls those business’s prices and punishes those that resist. Lina Kahn’s FTC has formally launched its litigation campaign against Amazon, claiming that the company has violated …

Pitching For Reform: Cangrejeros' Push To Level The Legal Playing Field By Challenging Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, Justin P. Chaljub

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

For over one-hundred years, professional baseball has enjoyed an antitrust exemption unique among American major sports leagues, stemming from Supreme Court decisions in Federal Baseball and its progeny. This exemption has significantly influenced the evolution and structure of Major League Baseball (MLB). Despite extensive criticism and challenges for judicial and legislative reform, the exemption persists today.

However, new efforts have emerged to comprehensively disrupt this framework. In 2023, Nostalgic Partners was brought and structured to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Plaintiffs anticipated they would lose at the lower court levels and garnered widespread support for the Court to grant a …

Trustless Trust And Antitrust: A Synthesis, Matt Blaszczyk

Touro Law Review

Authors have written of antitrust law’s demise in the face of blockchain, which, seemingly, achieves the pro-competitive ends of the law through technology and private ordering. Permissionless blockchains in particular are said to offer a vision of radical disinter mediation and a break with the platform economy troubling the regulators today. At the same time, blockchain supposedly presents challenges to antitrust doctrine, from the most basic of concepts to the viability of enforcement and remedies. Finally, blockchain community governance is said to allow for private ordering of antitrust, i.e., enforcement of rules attempting to protect competition, which are at the …

From Anti-Bds To Anti-Esg: The Next Generation Of Boycotting The “Boycott” Is Only Slightly Less Problematic, Kali Venable

Washington and Lee Law Review

In response to an explosion in Environmental, Social, Governance (“ESG”), state lawmakers are enacting statutes to penalize companies that “boycott” industries they seek to protect. This Note first explains how we got here. To do so, it explains how lawmakers used statutes aimed at suppressing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (“BDS”) movement against Israel as templates for anti-ESG boycott laws. Further, this Note examines the rise of ESG and the subsequent anti-ESG movement that led to the enactment of state anti-ESG boycott laws pertaining to public contracts.

By analyzing the mixed outcomes of recent First Amendment challenges to anti-BDS laws …

Would Jackie Robinson Play Baseball Today? How Baseball Owners Conspire To Restrain Trade And Foster Unequal Opportunities For Player Development, Stephen F. Ross

Marquette Sports Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Radical Challenge To The Antitrust Order, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The U.S. antitrust order is undergoing a radical challenge along three key dimensions. First, the challengers seek to denaturalize markets and replace a commitment to competition with an anti-domination norm. Second, the challengers seek to dramatically alter institutional arrangements, with Congressional legislation and agency rulemaking replacing antitrust's longstanding commitment to judicial common law incrementalism. Finally, the challengers would replace the antitrust order's preferred juridical approach-open-ended rule of reason analysiswith a return to bright-line prohibitory rules and a related demotion of economists as decision-makers. Each of these challenges entails significant consequences, many of them unintended, counter-productive, or perverse. Contrary to the …

The American Antimonopoly Tradition: Origins, Contradictions, Transformations, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Proponents of antitrust reform argue for the rediscovery of an American antimonopoly tradition that predated the Sherman Act by centuries and suggests the reimagination of a more robust contemporary policy against concentrated economic power. But historically there have been a number of distinct and often contradictory strands of American antimonopoly. The American colanists inherited a weak, recent, and largely invented antimonopoly common law tradition focused on exclusive grants of privilege from the crown. In the nineteenth century, antimonopoly became a generative and ubiquitous concept in state legislatures and courts, but one with multiple, inconsistent meanings that evolved in the decades …

Deconstructing Trinko, Edward D. Cavanagh

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Recent monopolization cases against Google and Facebook brought by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission signal that the United States is at the dawn of a new era of aggressive antitrust enforcement. If those cases are to be harbingers of an antitrust renaissance, then antitrust enforcers must confront and successfully overcome the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Trinko, which has cast a long shadow over antitrust enforcement efforts in monopolization cases. In breathtakingly broad and provocative language that is decidedly unsympathetic to enforcement of §2 of the Sherman Act, particularly in unilateral refusal to deal cases, …

Race-Ing Antitrust, Bennett Capers, Gregory Day

Michigan Law Review

Antitrust law has a race problem. To spot an antitrust violation, courts inquire into whether an act has degraded consumer welfare. Since anticompetitive practices are often assumed to enhance consumer welfare, antitrust offenses are rarely found. Key to this framework is that antitrust treats all consumers monolithically; that consumers are differently situated, especially along lines of race, simply is ignored.

We argue that antitrust law must disaggregate the term “consumer” to include those who disproportionately suffer from anticompetitive practices via a community welfare standard. As a starting point, we demonstrate that anticompetitive conduct has specifically been used as a tool …

No Harm No Foul?: The Remnants Of Pure Consumer Harm In Monopsony Cases Under The Sherman Act, William Jackson

American University Business Law Review

Part II of this Comment discusses the contested development of the consumer harm standard under the antitrust laws, the economic underpinnings of monopsonies as opposed to traditional monopolies, and the problems that courts have faced (or more frequently ignored) when deciding monopsony cases under the Sherman Act. Part III analyzes how courts that have abandoned a strict requirement of consumer harm are better able to conform with the true purpose of the Sherman Act. Part IV recommends that the U.S. Supreme Court must formally disavow the consumer harm standard in monopsony cases, or Congress must amend the Sherman Act to …

Ftc V. Qualcomm And The Need To Reboot Antitrust Goals, Beatriz Del Chiaro Da Rosa

University of Miami Business Law Review

The antitrust community is facing a demanding question: Is antitrust enforcement ultimately about protecting consumers, competition, or both? This question has sparked debates about the ultimate goals of antitrust law. On one side of the debate, supporters of the consumer welfare standard; and on the other side, supporters of the Neo-Brandeisian standard of enforcement. At this crucial time in the debate of overarching antitrust goals, the Ninth Circuit’s holding in Federal Trade Commission v. Qualcomm Incorporated, one of the most important antitrust cases in the twenty-first century, poses many issues for the consumer welfare standard and antitrust enforcement in the …

The Impact Of Amex And Its Progeny On Technology Platforms, Kacyn H. Fujii

Michigan Law Review

Big Tech today faces unprecedented levels of antitrust scrutiny. Yet antitrust enforcement against Big Tech still faces a major obstacle: the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Ohio v. American Express. Popularly called Amex, the case imposed a higher initial burden on antitrust plaintiffs in cases involving two-sided markets. Two-sided markets connect two distinct, noncompeting groups of customers on a shared platform. These platforms have indirect network effects, meaning that one group of customers benefits when more of the second group of customers joins the platform. Two-sided markets are ubiquitous in the technology sector, encompassing social media, search engines, …

Movies To Fall Asleep To: The Antitrust Implications Of Terminating The Paramount Consent Decrees, Isha C. Biswas

American University Business Law Review

This Comment will argue that, while the Consent Decrees seem obsolete in the 21st century when studios own significant numbers of theaters, movies are no longer released one theater at a time like they were in 1948, which implicates relevant antitrust standards. With the prevalence of streaming, termination of the Paramount Decrees would allow streaming giants such as Disney+ and Netflix to monopolize the movie release market through the hybrid release model, impacting future case law and litigation. Part II of this Comment will examine the Paramount case, the consent decrees that resulted from it, and the judicial and congressional …

Market Power And Switching Costs: An Empirical Study Of Online Networking Market, Shin-Ru Cheng

University of Cincinnati Law Review

In recent years, states have launched several antitrust investigations targeting digital platforms. A major difficulty in these investigations is demonstrating the extent of a digital platform’s market power. Market power is defined as the control of the output or the price without the loss of business to competitors. As will be explored in this Article, market power is a critical component in an antitrust analysis. On several occasions, courts have adopted the switching costs approach in their analysis of market power. According to this approach, market power may be inferred when the costs of switching from one supplier to another …

The Necessity In Antitrust Law, Gregory Day

Washington and Lee Law Review

Antitrust rarely, if ever, gives primacy to a dispute’s subject matter. For instance, exclusionary conduct that raises the price of a lifesaving drug receives the same analysis as a restraint of baseball cards. Since antitrust’s purpose is to promote consumer welfare, the equal treatment of important and mundane goods might appear perplexing. After all, competition to produce affordable foods, medicines, and other necessities would seem to foster consumer welfare more than inane products do.

In fact, defendants generally win antitrust lawsuits even when monopolizing necessities because the primary method of antitrust review is notably deferential to defendants. To explain this …

Federalism, Free Competition, And Sherman Act Preemption Of State Restraints, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

The Sherman Act establishes free competition as the rule governing interstate trade. Banning private restraints cannot ensure that competitive markets allocate the nation's resources. State laws can pose identical threats to free markets, posing an obstacle to achieving Congress's goal to protect free competition.

The Sherman Act would thus override anticompetitive state laws under ordinary preemption standards. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court rejected such preemption in Parker v. Brown, creating the "state action doctrine." Parker and its progeny hold that state-imposed restraints are immune from Sherman Act preemption, even if they impose significant harm on out-of-state consumers. Parker's progeny …

Monopolizing Sports Data, Marc Edelman, John T. Holden

William & Mary Law Review

With legal sports betting viewed as a panacea for state budget woes across the United States, the underlying data that fuels the sports betting industry has emerged as an especially valuable asset. In the hopes of capitalizing on state laws that have now legalized sports betting, United States professional sports leagues have attempted to gain exclusive ownership rights over valuable sports betting data by asking legislators to mandate that bookmakers exclusively use data sold through the league. In addition, some sports leagues have imposed policies mandating that teams bundle together their collected data for purposes of selling it exclusively through …

Reviving Antitrust Enforcement In The Airline Industry, Jonathan Edelman

Michigan Law Review

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has broad but oft overlooked power to address antitrust issues among airlines through section 411 of the Federal Aviation Act. However, the DOT’s unwillingness to enforce antitrust more aggressively may be translating into higher fares and fees for airline travelers.

More aggressive antitrust enforcement is urgently needed. Recent research has revealed a widespread practice of common ownership in the airline industry, whereby investment firms own large portions of rival airline companies. Although this practice leads to higher prices and reduced competition, antitrust regulators, from the DOT to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade …

Alston And The Dejudicialization Of Antitrust, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

A curious feature of NCAA v. Alston is the shoe that didn’t drop, at least not immediately. “Put simply,” Justice Gorsuch wrote for a unanimous Court, “this suit involves admitted horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants exercise monopoly control.” Given that this pronouncement occurred on page fourteen of the Court’s opinion, one might have expected that the opinion would end on, say, page fifteen, for if there has been one fixed point in American antitrust law it has been that horizontal price-fixing, especially but not only by those with monopoly power, is per se illegal. Instead, the …

Will The Supreme Court Recover Its Own Fumble? How Alston Can Repair The Damage Resulting From Ncaa's Sports League Exemption, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

Horizontal restraints are unlawful per se unless a court can identify some redeeming virtue that such restraints may create. In National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (“NCAA”), the Supreme Court rejected this standard, refusing to condemn horizontal restraints on price and output imposed by the NCAA without specifying any possible redeeming virtues. The Court emphasized that other restraints not before the Court were necessary to create and maintain athletic competition like that supervised by the NCAA. This exemption for sports leagues ensures that all restraints imposed by such entities merit Rule …

Farmer Cooperatives "Take Cover": The Capper-Volstead Exemption Is Under Siege, Donald M. Barnes, Jay L. Levine

Arkansas Law Review

"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization." There can be little dispute that food production is of vital interest to any nation’s security and economy. For this reason, the United States Congress, like many other legislatures around the world, has accorded special treatment to the agricultural industry, and particularly to farmers. One example of this special treatment is the Capper-Volstead Act, which provides farmers with immunity from antitrust liability for joint conduct undertaken by and through an “association” of producers.

Requiem For A Lightweight: How Ncaa Continues To Distort Antitrust Doctrine, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court speaks rarely about the meaning of the Sherman Act. When the Court does speak, its pronouncements have particular resonance and staying power among jurists, scholars, and enforcers. NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma was such a case. There the Court assessed agreements reducing the output and increasing the prices of televised college football games. After announcing that restraints imposed by sports leagues are exempt from per se condemnation, the Court went on to invalidate the challenged agreements under the rule of reason because they produced significant economic harm without offsetting benefits. In so …

Antitrust's High-Tech Exceptionalism, Rebecca H. Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

American competition policy has four big problems: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These companies each reign over a sector of the digital marketplace, controlling both the consumer experience and the possibility of competitive entry. This Essay argues that the conventional account of how antitrust law allowed this consolidation of market power - that it failed to evolve to address the market realities of the technology sector-is incomplete. Not only did courts fail to adapt antitrust law from its smoke-stack roots, but they gave big tech special dispensation under traditional antitrust doctrine. Swayed by prevailing utopic views about digital markets in …

Teamwork Or Collusion? Changing Antitrust Law To Permit Corporate Action On Climate Change, Dailey C. Koga

Washington Law Review

In an era of apprehension about climate change and the future of our planet, private companies are increasingly recognizing their role in increasing sustainability and lowering carbon emissions. To address this growing concern, some industry leaders are taking unilateral action to implement sustainable practices, but other companies have made agreements to fight emissions together. However, the Sherman Antitrust Act forbids agreements in restraint of trade. Further, antitrust law traditionally has refused to recognize ethical or moral justifications as legitimate reasons to permit anticompetitive agreements. As society’s concern for the planet grows and elected leaders move slower than needed to address …

Mere Common Ownership And The Antitrust Laws, Thomas A. Lambert

Faculty Publications

"Common ownership," also called "horizontal shareholding," refers to a stock investor's ownership of minority stakes in multiple competing firms. Recent empirical studies have purported to show that institutional investors' common ownership reduces competition among commonly owned competitors. "Mere common ownership" is horizontal shareholding that is not accompanied by any sort of illicit agreement, such as a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, or the holding of a control-conferring stake. This Article considers the legality of mere common ownership under the U.S. antitrust laws. Prominent antitrust scholars and the leading treatise have concluded that mere common ownership that has the incidental effect of lessening market …

Antitrust Regulation And The Federal-State Balance: Restoring The Original Design, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

The U.S. Constitution divides authority over commerce between states and the national government. Passed in 1890, the Sherman Act (“the Act”) reflects this allocation of power, reaching only those harmful agreements that are “in restraint of... commerce among the several States.” This Article contends that the Supreme Court erred when it radically altered the balance between state and national power over trade restraints in 1948, abruptly abandoning decades of precedent recognizing exclusive state authority over most intrastate restraints. This revised construction of the Act contravened the statute’s apparent meaning, unduly expanded the reach of federal antitrust regulation, and undermined the …