Distinguishing Legitimate Price Competition from Unlawful Exclusionary Behaviour: Reconciling and Rationalising the Case-Law
This paper analyses EU cases on abuse of a dominant position dealing with low cost pricing by a dominant firm to determine: (i) whether they are consistent with each other and the goals underpinning the EU competition laws: (ii) whether any evolution in the case-law can be detected and (iii) what changes can be anticipated in the future and would be desirable to ensure the law’s coherence. In particular, it considers the implications of the judgment of the General Court in Intel which has reignited the debate about the philosophical basis of EU competition law and the question of how ‘abusive’ conduct can or should be identified. The paper concludes that there is a need to rationalise the case law and for the EU Courts to explain more fully the policy underpinning the cases, when it is legitimate to rely on presumptions of illegality in the context of Article 102, how the various types of abuse relate to each other and how case-law under Article 101 can, or should, impact on the development of principles under Article 102. As the Court of Justice will have the opportunity to address many of these issues in the appeal from the General Court’s judgment in Intel, the paper examines some of the important issues which require assessment in that judgment.
Whither Antitrust Regulation of Loyalty Rebates in China: The Tetra Pak Decision and Lessons from the EU
On 16 November 2016, China issued the trailblazing Tetra Pak decision, which introduced the concept of loyalty rebates into the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law. This article is aimed at critically assessing the loyalty rebates analysis in this decision and discussing how the law could develop thereon. It argues that, while breaking the ground for an effects-based approach to loyalty rebates in China, this decision failed to establish a solid theory of harm. This destined that the decision-maker would not be able to engage in a contextualized effects-analysis it had envisaged. By comparing this problem to a similar one in EU competition law, this article suggests that the exclusive dealing analogy should be employed for loyalty rebates analysis.
In-services and empty threats: The roles of organizational practices and workplace experiences in shaping U.S. educators' understandings of students' rights.
This paper applies theoretical frameworks from organizational sociology and sociolegal studies to examine factors associated with educators' conceptions of students' rights to due process in disciplinary actions. We analyze a unique representative data set of 402 teachers and 200 administrators in U.S. high schools to investigate how educators understand the rights to due process articulated in the Supreme Court case of Goss v. Lopez (1975). We then examine whether individual characteristics and participation in organizational processes are associated with educators' understandings of students' due process rights. Findings suggest that educators' understandings of students' entitlements to due process vary with educators' level of education, experience of school-related legal threats, and participation in district or diocese in-service training programs on students' rights. Results point to organizational climate as a key factor in shaping educators' rights conceptions and the role of law in American schools.