{"id":1619,"date":"2008-10-29T20:59:11","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T01:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2008-10-29T20:59:11","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T01:59:11","slug":"priorities-for-the-next-president-antitrust-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/10\/priorities-for-the-next-president-antitrust-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Priorities for the Next President: Antitrust Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The priority of the new administration in the field of antitrust law will be to undo the damage wrought by Chicago School dogmatists. This does not mean that the economic theories that form the basis of Chicago School economics or its application are incorrect. But, the broad assault by academic, bureaucratic, and juristic theorists over practical reality that has gained significant momentum during the administration of George Bush the younger (hereafter the Bush Administration) has struck down the existing antitrust legal analysis without regard to precedent, evidence, jury findings, and the value to\u00a0society of private attorneys general in the enforcement of\u00a0antitrust laws. \u00a0During the Bush Administration, the older\u00a0Chicago School theorists on the United States Supreme Court and the lesser appellate courts have joined with new appointees to alter in many basic ways the structure of antitrust law, e.g., they have undone the per se standard for vertical minimum price-fixing, created high barriers for plaintiffs at the pleading stage for antitrust cases so that it is\u00a0difficult to avoid dismissal prior to discovery, and strengthened the freedom of\u00a0monopolists to refuse to deal with parties dependent on what they\u00a0sell and thereby to avoid greater competition for whatever their products may be used to produce.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The current neoconservative majority of the United States Supreme Court and the lesser appellate courts will make it difficult for a new presidential administration to bring the change needed to correct the imbalances fostered by the Bush Administration. Because the development of antitrust law is driven more by the courts than by the executive branch (especially when one is trying to open the spigot to allow application of antitrust law to police the marketplace, as against using the government as a bottleneck), the new administration may have little effect in its efforts to rein in the excesses wrought by the Chicago School theorists. Still, like the Bush Administration, the new administration can use its executive branch powers to foster practical doctrines. By challenging the unsupported parts of the Chicago School doctrine (e.g., fear of free riders where none seem to appear) and\u00a0showing respect for administrative agency determinations, the new administration may enable a revival of antitrust law protection against the\u00a0abuses in vertical distribution and elsewhere that have been sheltered by the Bush Administration.\u00a0 A healing of the open rift between the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission that has simmered for many years and finally erupted over the past year may foster more effective cooperation and thereby\u00a0better protection of the marketplace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, whenever the Antitrust Division, the FTC, or private parties bring antitrust actions, the judicial theorists are very likely to apply standards set by the Chicago School dogmatists.\u00a0 Consider the willingness of the neoconservative members of the Supreme Court last year (in\u00a0Leegin Creative Leather Products<\/em>, an antitrust case, when addressing a substantive standard of proof\u00a0that had been actively upheld for almost a century) to abandon the\u00a0stare decisis<\/em>\u00a0standards that had been\u00a0endorsed by some of\u00a0the same\u00a0neoconservative jurists\u00a0a year earlier in Wisconsin Right to Life<\/em>.\u00a0 This\u00a0augurs poorly for\u00a0the prospects\u00a0that their judicial activism will be stilled by a new administration. Indeed, even the ability of the FTC to bring reasoned application of the antitrust laws administratively has been undermined by the neoconservative jurists, who have not avoided\u00a0treading on the historic fact-finding role of administrative agencies. Although a new presidential administration may change the focus of enforcement by the Department of Justice, it may take many years to undo the actions\u00a0of the neoconservative majority of the current Supreme Court and\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0Bush appointees\u00a0in the lower-level United States courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The priority of the new administration in the field of antitrust law will be to undo the damage wrought by Chicago School dogmatists. This does not mean that the economic theories that form the basis of Chicago School economics or its application are incorrect. But, the broad assault by academic, bureaucratic, and juristic theorists over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,27,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-regulation","category-presidency-executive-branch","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}