Antitrust

In Snyder v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a federal criminal statute covers only bribes, not gratuities. The key issue in factually similar cases is whether a quid pro quo agreement occurred. The Snyder Court provided no guidance on this issue. This Comment responds by turning to antitrust law. Antitrust faces the same problem as bribery law: determining whether an illegal agreement occurred when both parties benefit from it. Antitrust has developed several “plus factors” to explain what circumstantial evidence suffices to prove an illegal agreement. This Comment uses that antitrust framework to propose ten bribery plus factors.

Search costs matter and are reflected in many areas of law. For example, most disclosure requirements economize on search costs. A homeowner who must disclose the presence of termites saves a potential buyer, and perhaps many such buyers, from spending money to search, or inspect, the property. Similarly, requirements to reveal expected miles per gallon, or risks posed by a drug, economize on search costs. But these examples point to simple strategies and costs that can be minimized or entirely avoided with some legal intervention. Law can do better and take account of more subtle things once sophisticated search strategies are understood. This Essay introduces such search strategies and their implications for law.

The importance of aggregation and division in modern antitrust policy cannot be overstated. Illegal acts of collusion are defined by the agreement of separate competitors to join together in acting as though they were a single firm in a collusive scheme.

Earlier this year, after suffering from depression, University of Michigan football lineman James Hudson applied to transfer to the University of Cincinnati.