The Influence of the Areeda-Hovenkamp Treatise in the Lower Courts and What It Means for Institutional Reform in Antitrust

• Author: Rebecca Haw Allensworth
• Position: Associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School; J.D., Harvard Law School; M.Phil, University of Cambridge; B.A. Yale University
• Pages: 1919-1941

1919

The Influence of the Areeda–Hovenkamp

Treatise in the Lower Courts and What It

Means for Institutional Reform in

Antitrust

Rebecca Haw Allensworth

I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1920

II. THE AREEDA–HOVENKAMP TREATISE IN THE LOWER COURTS ... 1921

A. THE TREATISE BY THE NUMBERS ............................................ 1921

B. OTHER MEASURES OF INFLUENCE ........................................... 1922

III. ACCOUNTING FOR THE DOMINANCE OF THE AREEDA–HOVENKAMP

TREATISE ..................................................................................... 1924

A. CLEAR AND COMPREHENSIVE ................................................. 1924

B. RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE ................................................... 1924

C. AUTHORIAL PEDIGREE ........................................................... 1925

D. THE LAW VACUUM HYPOTHESIS ............................................ 1926

1. Describing the Law Vacuum Hypothesis: Why So Many

Gaps? ............................................................................ 1926

2. Testing the Law Vacuum Hypothesis: Areeda–Hovenkamp

Fills in the Gaps ............................................................ 1929

a. Loyalty Discounts and the Areeda–Hovenkamp

Treatise ................................................................... 1930

b. The FTAIA and the Hovenkamp Treatise ................. 1931

IV. THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE ...................................................... 1933

A. MORE THAN AN ORACLE ....................................................... 1933

1. Citation and Admiration ............................................ 1934

2. Depth of Discussion .................................................... 1934

3. The Pressure to Cohere .............................................. 1936

 Associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School; J.D., Harvard Law School; M.Phil,

University of Cambridge; B.A. Yale University. © 2015, Rebecca Haw Allensworth. Thank you to

the participants of the Iowa Law Review Symposium honoring Herbert Hovenkamp and to Edward

K. Cheng for helpful comments on a previous draft.

1920 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 100:1919

B. HAVE THE AUTHORITIES RATIFIED THE TREATISE? ................. 1936

C. THE TROUBLE WITH THE TREATISE’S AUTHORITY .................. 1937

V. INSTITUTIONAL REFORM TO ADDRESS THE LAW VACUUM .......... 1938

A. REFORM AT THE SUPREME COURT: RAISING THE BAR FOR

ECONOMIC AND STATISTICAL KNOWLEDGE ............................. 1938

B. REFORM AT THE FTC: NOTICE-AND-COMMENT RULEMAKING AND

DEFERENCE IN THE COURTS ................................................... 1940

VI. CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 1941

I. INTRODUCTION

It is often pointed out that while the United States Supreme Court is the

final arbiter in setting antitrust policy and promulgating antitrust rules, it does

so too infrequently to be an efficient regulator.1 And since the antitrust

agencies, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Antitrust Division

of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), rarely issue guidelines, and even more

rarely issue rules or regulations, very little antitrust law is handed down from

on high. Instead, circuits split, and lower courts must muddle through new

antitrust problems by finding analogies in technologically and socially

obsolete precedents.

When faced with this void of authority, especially covering cutting-edge

antitrust issues raised by new technology and business arrangements, lower

courts often turn to a single treatise, Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust

Principles and Their Application, by the late Philip E. Areeda and Herbert

Hovenkamp.2 The treatise’s influence is such that Justice Breyer has remarked

“that most practitioners would prefer to have two paragraphs of Areeda’s

treatise on their side than three Courts of Appeals or four Supreme Court

Justices.”3 Why courts are so influenced by the treatise is no secret: It is up-to-

date, technologically savvy, politically middle-of-the-road, economically

literate, comprehensible, and comprehensive. The monopoly that Professor

Hovenkamp (as the only living editor of the treatise) has inherited and

lovingly maintains is certainly the kind of which antitrust would approve: It is

a monopoly “thrust upon it”4 by simply being the best. But its dominance in

lower courts and, therefore, in firm decision-making, should raise concerns

1. See HERBERT HOVENKAMP, THE ANTITRUST ENTERPRISE: PRINCIPLE AND EXECUTION 4

(2005) (“Lack of adequate Supreme Court supervision has led to many divisions among the

federal courts of appeal.”).

2. See generally Hillary Greene & D. Daniel Sokol, Judicial Treatment of the Antitrust Treatise ,

100 IOWA L. REV. 2039 (2015).

3. Stephen Breyer, In Memoriam: Phillip E. Areeda, 109 HARV. L. REV. 889, 890 (1996).

4. United States v. Aluminum Co. of Am., 148 F.2d 416, 429 (2d Cir. 1945).