Good Intentions Gone Awry: Racial Quotas in Connecticut Schools

Wen Fa

Hartford, Connecticut is a modern day tale of two cities. The city has world-class magnet schools, where students have access to butterfly vivariums and some of the best education the state has to offer. Then there are failing neighborhood schools, where rust has changed the color of traffic signs and where many children’s hope for a brighter future have been extinguished.

The DOJ and Other Federal Agencies Oppose the FTC in FTC v. Qualcomm

Adam Mossoff

The DOJ has been joined by two other agencies in its contention that the FTC has adopted a position that is not just at odds with antitrust law, but is also at odds with the national security policies of the U.S. federal government.

Licensing Speech & Regulating the Internet: Tennessee’s Auctioneer Licensing Scheme

Braden Boucek

“A state may not, under the guise of prohibiting professional misconduct, ignore constitutional rights.” And yet, ignoring fundamental speech rights is precisely what Tennessee is doing through its auctioneer licensing regime.

Man Bites Dog – Idaho Repeals its Regulatory Code

J. Kennerly Davis

Idaho has long been widely known for the natural wonders that grace its landscape: the rugged wilderness, the snow-capped peaks, the sparkling waters and, of course, the potatoes.

A Recipe for A Better World; Nine Parts Innovation, One Part Regulation

Jeff Stier

Sometimes well-intentioned, restrictive government interventions are backward-looking problem-solving tools. Too often, they fail to deliver on the promises made to justify their costs, both in terms of unintended consequences and their cost to individual freedoms.

Emerging Tech and Regulation: What Will the Future Hold?

In March, the Pepperdine Law Review cohosted a symposium with the Regulatory Transparency Project on “Regulating Tech: Present Challenges and Possible Solutions”. The last panel of a very busy day was focused on emerging tech and government regulation, with leading thinkers from across several industries discussing the current environment for everything from drones to ridesharing.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford on Antitrust Regulation and Enforcement

Deputy Assistant Attorney General for International Affairs Roger Alford delivered the keynote address in March at the Pepperdine Law Review‘s Symposium.

An Unprecedented Conflict Between the FTC and DOJ at the Intersection of Antitrust and Patent Law

Adam Mossoff

The Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Qualcomm under the antitrust laws has led to an unprecedented conflict between the FTC and the Department of Justice.  In late April, the DOJ filed a “statement of interest” in the case. If Judge Koh rules against Qualcomm, the DOJ requested the right to participate in the remedy phase of the trial to introduce evidence about the harms to innovation from an “overly broad remedy,” such as breaking up Qualcomm or forcing it to renegotiate all of its licenses.

The Flaws in the Latest Proposal to Break Up Big Tech

William Rinehart

Sen. Warren essentially calls for a return to the regulatory structure of “the Gilded Age…” But the era’s efforts to pull apart companies hardly make an exemplary record.

A Bargaining Model v. Reality in FTC v. Qualcomm: A Reply to Kattan & Muris

Douglas Ginsburg and Joshua D. Wright

In a recent article Joe Kattan and Tim Muris (K&M) criticize our article on the predictive power of bargaining models in antitrust, in which we used two recent applications to explore implications for uses of bargaining models in courts and antitrust agencies moving forward. Like other theoretical models used to predict competitive effects, complex bargaining models require courts and agencies rigorously to test their predictions against data from the real world markets and institutions to which they are being applied. Where the “real-world evidence,” as Judge Leon described such data in AT&T/Time Warner, is inconsistent with the predictions of a complex bargaining model, then the tribunal should reject the model rather than reality.