An article co-authored by Harry First, Charles L. Denison Professor of Law, and Loyola University Chicago School of Law professor Spencer Weber Waller has been named best general antitrust academic article in the Institute of Competition Law’s 2014 Antitrust Writing Awards.
“Antitrust’s Democracy Deficit,” published last year in Fordham Law Review, discusses a shift in antitrust enforcement from a movement grounded in political and popular will to a technocratic exercise controlled mostly by lawyers and economists. After analyzing the actions of major antitrust institutions and comparing US antitrust to the European system, First and his co-author analyze how a highly technical approach to antitrust has resulted in “an extreme laissez-faire ideology for antitrust enforcement,” before arguing why a greater degree of democracy would reinvigorate the system.
First has also co-organized two major antitrust events this academic year. A conference in November observing the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court antitrust case United States v. Philadelphia National Bank contemplated the past, present, and future of merger law. Participants included Eleanor Fox ’61, Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Trade Regulation; Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; and Judge Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In January, the third annual Next Generation of Antitrust Scholars Conference, co-sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Section of Antitrust Law, provided an opportunity for younger law professors to present their antitrust and competition law research to senior antitrust scholars and practitioners for comment.
Posted April 29, 2014