In April 2000, the FTC issued a Complaint against women’s shoe distributor Nine West, claiming that Nine West had engaged in minimum resale price maintenance (RPM) (i.e., the setting of minimum prices that retailers could charge for its shoes). Apparently, Nine West was providing retailers with lists of “off limits” or “non-promote” shoes that weren’t to be promoted except during defined periods. Because Nine West sought acquiescence in those policies by threatening to terminate offending dealers, the FTC maintained that it had engaged in a minimum RPM agreement. At that time, such agreements were deemed to be per se unreasonable–and thus automatically illegal–restraints of trade. Nine West ultimately agreed to a broadly worded Consent Order requiring it to refrain from (among other things) fixing prices at which its retailers may sell, advertise, or promote its products; “otherwise pressuring” its dealers to adhere to resale prices; and “[s]ecuring or attempting to secure any commitment or assurance from any dealer concerning the resale price at which the dealer may advertise, promote, offer for sale or sell any Nine West Products.”

Read the full piece here.

It is springtime, but already the thrills of March Madness have fallen into a painful abyss. Die-hard college basketball fans, so recently frantic over their brackets and whooping their way to dreams of a national championship, now turn to the sports pages with fear and loathing. Will their team’s freshman power forward, or All-American point guard, give up college for a multimillion dollar contract? Oh, the pain, terror, and non-academic karma of it all.

Read the full piece here.

In a series of posts (Part I, Part II and Part III), I’ve sketched out how the trend toward increasing detachment in L&E scholarship might reduce the influence of the L&E movement at the retail level and become its ultimate undoing. I must say, writing this series has been a lot of fun but has also been a bit depressing as somebody with more than a theoretical stake in the future of L&E in law schools, and more importantly, somebody who views the “retail” success of L&E as critical to its growth.

Read the full piece here.

In previous posts (Part I and Part II) I discussed the increasing trend towards formal mathematics in L&E scholarship and some of the potential issues this raises for the L&E movement as it becomes more detached from the legal academy. This post focuses on another question: What will L&E scholarship in law schools look like in the future?

Read the full piece here. 

I’ve been waiting for my old con law prof to take a political stand I could really get behind, and he finally has. Barack Obama is the only one of the presidential candidates to take a firm stand against this shamefully populist gas tax holiday. Good for you, Prof!

Read the full piece here. 

Harvard’s Einer Elhauge answers the titular question in the newest issue of Competition Policy International, in response to a review of his new textbook Global Antitrust Law and Economics (with Damien Geradin) at the newly revamped Global Competition Policy website.   The response essay is less about the particulars of the book than it is about what the fundamental goals of modern competition law courses are and should be.  The debate takes the form of teaching doctrine and procedure vs. economic analysis with Elhauge defending the latter.  Here’s an excerpt from Elhauge driving home the point…

Read the full piece here.

In my previous post, I sketched out some trends in the Law & Economics movement in recent years. Specifically, I’ve focused on the trends towards increasing mathematical formality and specialization within economics as a stand alone discipline. The post triggered some thoughtful responses from Larry Solum and Larry Ribstein for which I am grateful. I also received a number of responses in private which asked, rather bluntly, “So what?” The point was that even if everything I claimed about trends in economics and L&E were true, perhaps the result would be L&E scholars being more detached from the legal academy and migrating to economics departments. Again, so what? L&E work would be getting done by somebody somewhere. More than one of these private responses included the observation that maybe L&E types should be in economics departments anyway where there are tougher tenure standards, peer review, and less pay.

Read the full piece here. 

The D.C. Circuit’s opinion is available here.  Here is one of the key passages explaining the D.C. Circuit’s logic…

Read the full piece here. 

Sunstein and Thaler have a series of posts over at Volokh Consipiracy on their new book Nudge, which expands on their notion of libertarian paternalism (see here, here , here and here).  Something in the most recent post caught my eye.  In preparing to respond to various objections to libertarian paternalism, Sunstein argues that this sort of paternalism offers the “best of both worlds”…

Read the full piece here.