Compared to the nominations of Justices Alito, Roberts and Sotomayor, there has been little excitement for the antitrust community on the most recent Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan.  But there is something.   The WSJ Law Blog reports that while Kagan refused to “praise the Leegin decision.”   Legal Times reports that in response to Senator Kohl’s questions about recent Supreme Court antitrust activity, including Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, Kagan offered some thoughts on the manner in which economic theory should be incorporated into antitrust doctrine…

Read the full piece here. 

Apparently, the Illinois Attorney General is investigating Lollapalooza for potential antitrust violations arising out of exclusivity clauses that the concert promoter includes in the contracts signed with artists who play the show.

Read the full piece here. 

Danny Sokol has posted the most downloaded antitrust law professors.  I come in 4th behind Damien Geradin, David Evans, and Herb Hovenkamp.   It is flattering to be in company like that by any measure.  Cool.  But, as Danny points out, what is even cooler is that George Mason is one of only a handful of schools with more than one faculty member making the list, with my colleague, co-author, and fellow Bruin economist Bruce Kobayashi coming in at #15.

Read the full piece here. 

As a sea of oil slops over sand, oysters and pelicans in the Gulf, it seems natural to blame the entity that made this happen– BP . The Gulf disaster could have easily been avoided–from the well design, to the defective seals, to the haphazard response, topped off with the lack of any backup plan. It doesn’t help that BP is a big, rich, oil company. The company will likely be sued and castigated in courts and markets.

There is a nice example in the WSJ concerning the economics of vertical contractual arrangements.  I’ve noted previously the apparent trend in the soda industry toward vertical integration and the link to the economics of promotional shelf space.  In particular, incentive conflicts between manufacturers and retailers of differentiated products over the use of promotional shelf space are pervasive.

Read the full piece here. 

One of my summer writing projects is a response to Einer Elhauge’s recent, highly acclaimed article, Tying, Bundled Discounts, and the Death of the Single Monopoly Profit Theory.  In the article, which appeared in the December 2009 Harvard Law Review, Elhauge defends current tying doctrine, which declares tie-ins to be per se illegal when the defendant has market power in the tying product market and the tie-in affects a “not insubstantial” volume of commerce in the tied product market.

Read the full piece here. 

Danny Sokol points to the Obama administration’s most recent effort to “reinvigorate” competition policy: some new proposed rules adding new sections to the existing regulations under the Packers & Stockyards Act. Emerging from the joint DOJ/ USDA agriculture workshops (see comments from Manne & Wright here; TOTM archives on agricultural antitrust here), the USDA must not have come away to impressed with the DOJ’s ability to enforce the antitrust laws on the behalf of consumers.  Either that, or the USDA was never too interested in consumers in the first place.

Read the full piece here. 

I don’t know.  But apparently, industry analysts preliminarily think not.   I tend to disagree.  At least, I think its far too early to be confident in either direction. Press reports, such as this one,  are primarily relying on the report of an analyst who correctly points out that Apple’s market share would be an obstacle for a case against Apple…

Read the full piece here. 

One of the most significant issues in current US antitrust policy has been the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to avoid some of the rigorous requirements imposed by Section 2 of the Sherman Act in monopolization cases by expanding FTC authority under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA). This issue is nothing new. FTC leadership has made clear its view that the limitations the Supreme Court has imposed on antitrust plaintiffs apply only in the context of private plaintiff cases – not in cases brought by the agencies. Thus, according to the FTC’s current line of thought, the Supreme Court’s restrictions on the agencies have been imposed erroneously on the agencies both by the Supreme Court and lower courts misinterpreting those decisions. Chairman Leibowitz frames the argument as follows…

Read the full piece here.