Michael DeBow - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Michael DeBow

University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1987

Since the first antitrust consent decree was entered some eighty years ago, consent decrees have ... more Since the first antitrust consent decree was entered some eighty years ago, consent decrees have been an important feature of the civil antitrust litigation conducted by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Roughly 70 percent of the Department's civil antitrust actions are settled by consent decrees in an average year, a percentage that has remained fairly constant since 1962.1 This paper discusses the policies of the Department of Justice with respect to antitrust decrees, as well as the practical problems attendant to this method of settlement. Part I outlines the Departmental procedures-both internal procedures and those procedures required by statute-followed when consent decrees are used. Part II discusses the problems created by the use of long-term and "reg

The Seton Hall Law Review, 2000

South Carolina Law Review, 1995

Missouri law review, 2009

I am honored to be a part of this conference. I very much appreciate the hospitality of the law s... more I am honored to be a part of this conference. I very much appreciate the hospitality of the law school, particularly the efforts of the Missouri Law Review staff. It has been a wonderful event. A wide range of views has been presented here, and I think that is a great credit to the people who organized the program. Just briefly, I am from Alabama, and I am not here to tell you what you should do in Missouri. That probably comes as a big relief. I became interested in this subject about fifteen years ago because of what was happening in my home state. It is a long story. One short version of it is that the award of punitive damages, in tort and even some contract litigation, had come off the rails to the point that Alabama was routinely castigated in Time magazine and elsewhere as "tort hell." (1) The voters noticed this and voted for a radical change in the composition of the Supreme Court of Alabama. I viewed this as a positive development. (2) Both during and after this ...

Policy Review, 1994

It has been four years since political and economic revolutions began to unravel the Eastern Bloc... more It has been four years since political and economic revolutions began to unravel the Eastern Bloc. The Vindication of democratic forms of government and free-market economies, over the tragic failures of statism, could not be clearer. One might have expected the collapse of communism to have a significant effect on U.S. politics, leading us to reconsider and restrain the seemingly inexorable growth of government in our own country. Obviously, this has not happened. Instead, the "postsocialist" American political environment is pregnant with contradiction. For on the one hand, nearly everyone acknowledges the superiority of private-property, market-driven economic systems. But at the same time, the political process in the supposedly triumphant societies of the West is resulting in larger and larger governments and tax burdens, and more extensive regulatory controls. As Nobel laureate James Buchanan puts it, socialism is dead, but Leviathan lives. We submit that a serious s...

The American Economist, 1981

have begun to act more and more like plaintiffs’ lawyers who aggressively assert novel claims in ... more have begun to act more and more like plaintiffs’ lawyers who aggressively assert novel claims in litigation. That trend was most dramatically illustrated by the AGs’ lawsuits against the tobacco industry in the 1990s. By filing those suits, which lacked any support in prior law, the AGs invaded areas of regulatory and tax policy that are properly the responsibility of state legislatures. Although the AGs probably did not expect to prevail in court, they filed with the aim of forcing the defendants to settle—which they did. The primary effects of the settlement have been higher prices for cigarettes and the transfer of enormous sums of money, raised through the higher prices, to state governments and the private attorneys they hired. Perversely, the settlement also protected the market shares and profit margins of the major tobacco companies and further confounded the public as to the proper role of government in American life. Unfortunately, the AGs’ “success” in the tobacco cases h...

Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century, 1999

Missouri Law Review, 2009