The Capper-Volstead Act, Agricultural Cooperatives, and Antitrust Immunity

Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney reviews the history of the immunity granted to agricultural cooperatives, the policies behind it, and recent private suits challenging cooperatives' conduct.

Competition and Consumer Protection: Strange Bedfellows or Best Friends?

Commissioner Julie Brill reviews the different ways in which competition and consumer protection principles have interacted in cases before the FTC and observes how the FTC is poised to deal with both sets of principles in the context of Section 5 litigation and consumer privacy issues.

New Agency, New Authority: What You Need to Know About the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

John Villafranco and Kristin McPartland report on the latest developments regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new agency expected to have overlapping enforcement authority with the FTC concerning consumer financial products and services.

The Crime Victims' Rights Act: Its Impact on Plea Negotiations with the Antitrust Division

John Majoras and Eric Enson look at how the Crime Victims' Rights Act, which was enacted to give crime victims notice of, access to, and a voice in public criminal proceedings, may be potentially misused by antitrust plaintiffs and their counsel to gain an advantage in pending civil litigation.

Market Definition, Upward Pricing Pressure, and the Role of Courts: A Response to Carlton and Israel

Responding to Dennis Carlton and Mark Israel's article in the October 2010 issue of the Source, Gopal Das Varma defends the antitrust agencies' decisions to de-emphasize market definition and to use the value of diverted sales, rather than market concentration, as a principal tool for evaluating unilateral effects.

Response to Gopal Das Varma's Market Definition, Upward Pricing Pressure, and the Role of Courts: A Response to Carlton and Israel

Dennis Carlton and Mark Israel defend their position by explaining how market definition provides a useful framework for agencies and courts and describing how regular use of the upward pricing pressure technique may generate errors.

An Update on State RPM Laws Since Leegin

Notwithstanding the Leegin decision, many states continue to view resale price maintenance as per se unlawful. Michael Lindsay reports on judicial developments involving state RPM laws and dual distribution, and provides an update to our linked chart, Overview of State RPM .

Paper Trail: Working Papers and Recent Scholarship

Editor John Woodbury finds Carl Shapiro's forthcoming article, The 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines: From Hedgehog to Fox in Forty Years, a "must-read," particularly for its explanation of unilateral effects analysis.