Thursday, June 13, 2013

It is time, this month, to celebrate the Antitrust Section's extraordinary publications output. How is it extraordinary? In every way you can imagine: quantity, quality, delivery to the Section's bottom line, and diversity of authorship and viewpoint.

First, let's consider sheer quantity. With the Section having recently completed a highly successful Spring Meeting featuring dozens of programs of the highest caliber and scores of expert speakers, one might wonder how its members find time to produce any published material, far less the steady stream of books and periodicals that issues forth from our scholarly colleagues on a monthly basis. What are the numbers? In terms of our books alone, since January 2012, the Section has published not only the most recent edition of its two-volume treatise, Antitrust Law Developments (Seventh) (March 2012), but also twelve additional books:

•  Franchise and Dealership Termination (January 2012)
•  Antitrust Issues in International Licensing Transactions
   (March 2012)
•  Market Definition in Antitrust: Theory and Case Studies
   (March 2012)
•  Market Power Handbook: Competition Law and
    Economic Foundations (2nd) (March 2012)
•  The Merger Review Process: A Step-by-Step Guide to
    U.S. and Foreign Merger Review (March 2012)
•  DOJ Civil Antitrust Practice and Procedure Manual (March 2012)
•  Handbook of U.S. Antitrust Sources
    (ebook March 2012, print summer 2012)
•  Price Discrimination Handbook (December 2012)
•  2012 Annual Review of Antitrust Law Developments (April 2013)
•  Frequently Asked Antitrust Questions (2nd) (April 2013)
•  Telecom Antitrust Handbook (2d) (June 2013)
•  Antitrust Discovery Handbook (3d) (June 2013)
 

This enormous output is the work of scores of Section authors and editors currently led by our Publications Officer, Mark Popofsky (and before Mark, by Jon Jacobson during early 2012), with crucial guidance from our Books and Treatises Co-Chairs, Kimberly Kefalas and Stephen Stack.

Because the latest book entry listed above - Antitrust Discovery Handbook (3d) - arrived on the shelves within the last week, let me take a moment to offer it as an illustration of the uniformly useful and scholarly content our Section provides for the benefit of our members. This latest edition of our Discovery Handbook is 212 pages long, and it covers all the latest developments in key areas of interest to antitrust litigators, including electronic discovery as it has evolved following the 2006 amendments to F.R.Civ. P. 26, 33, 34 and 45, class action discovery under the Class Action Fairness Act, discovery of an expert's work product in the wake of the 2010 amendments to F.R.Civ. P. 26, and the practices that have developed following Congress' 2008 revision of the rules governing inadvertent disclosure of information protected by the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine. Special thanks go to project chair Shannon McClure and her team of editors, and to Sarah Mathias and Amy Manning, past and current chairs of the Civil Practice and Procedure Committee, respectively, for having steered this major book project to timely completion.

Next consider the Section's three periodicals: Antitrust Law Journal (three issues each year), Antitrust Magazine (Fall, Spring and Summer editions), and The Antitrust Source (October, December, February, April, June and August issues). Tina Miller directs the entire enterprise and Tammy Feldman serves as the vital Managing Editor of ALJ. The combined Editorial Boards for our three outstanding publications total 82 Section members led by Editorial Board Chairs Kevin McDonald (Journal), Debbie Feinstein (Magazine), and Darren Tucker (Source). Although the Chair's monthly message does not have room to summarize the diverse content of all these publications, I can't resist noting that the June 2013 edition of the Antitrust Source will include Dick Steuer's outstanding Chair's Showcase program from 2012 assessing how competition law fits within the broader universe of national and international competition policy with excellent presentations by Jon Baker, Spencer Waller, Frederic Jenny, Susan Schwab, Carl Shapiro, Joseph Stiglitz, and Phil Weiser.

I cannot claim pure objectivity and so will not overly burden this audience with my own view that the overall quality of our antitrust scholarship is unsurpassed. But there are some neutral indicators which make the case far better than my grand claims. Consider only this one: Our Antitrust Law Journal has earned first position among comparable law journals as the most frequently cited publication in U.S. court rulings in antitrust litigation every year between 2003 and 2011 (the latest year for which data are available).

The Section cannot be indifferent to the marketplace, so delivery to the bottom line is also an important factor for measuring the success of our publications enterprise. I'll cite two metrics here. Although we are one of the smaller Sections of the ABA in terms of our membership, the Section of Antitrust Law regularly tops the charts among ABA entities in terms of gross revenues generated from publications. Over the last three years, we have placed third, first, and third, respectively. And with all our content provided by volunteer authors, our revenues from publications make a very strong contribution to the Section's bottom line. In 2012 alone, our positive performance against budget benefited from net publications revenue of over $1,000,000.

Diversity of authorship and viewpoint is a final parameter of great importance that also might seem to be in the eye of the beholder, but here again our sheer numbers of volunteers tell the story. I have already enumerated our host of periodicals editors. Add the 188 named contributors to ALD VII, who  worked under Editorial Chair Jonathan Gleklen and his eight-person Board. Then add the large numbers of listed contributors and editors whose names appear in the forewords to the twelve books of 2012 and 2013 named above. Sure, there will be some repeat contributors double- and triple-counted. But however one totals the numbers, you have in aggregate a very, very large crowd of writers there. And it is a multitude blessed by extraordinary skill and viewpoint diversity, as will be readily appreciated by anyone familiar with the US antitrust scene who takes the time to scan through their names.

The publications of the Section of Antitrust Law provide an invaluable resource to the U.S. antitrust community and to the broader competition law world. We are fortunate for the many Section members who dedicate their time and effort to making our books and periodicals great, month after month, year after year.

Ted Voorhees 
Chair, Section of Antitrust Law