Judges or Experts: Who Should Rule the High-Tech Economy?
At the International Center for Law & Economics’ March 13 conference in Rome—“Substance over Slogans: Competition and the Wealth of Nations”—the sixth panel, “Judges or Experts: Who Should Rule the High-Tech Economy?” featured Francisco Marcos, the Hon. Douglas H. Ginsburg, Maria Maciá, Mariateresa Maggiolino, and A. Douglas Melamed. The discussion compared courts, agencies, and industrial policy across key dimensions—speed, expertise, due process, and error costs—highlighting that each institutional model comes with distinct strengths and weaknesses.
The panel then focused on how those tradeoffs play out in practice, especially across U.S. and European systems. Participants raised concerns about politicization, overreach, and institutional bias, while also exploring hybrid approaches like specialized courts. The bottom line: the real question isn’t who should decide, but how to design institutions that balance expertise, independence, and error costs in fast-moving markets.
Video of the full panel is embedded below.