Chillin'Competition

Our last post revolved around a well-known quote from Philip Areeda that explains the evolution of the law in terms of judicial inertia/judging by catchphrase. Areeda’s explanation has the virtue of verbalizing brilliantly in simple and intuitively correct terms a human factor that explains why some legal rules may at times evolve beyond the limits of their logic. [To be sure, as noted elsewhere his explanation certainly applies not only to theories that expand liability, but also to those that limit it; in fact, the example I used may arguably refer to the latter category].

In my view, the idea underlying Areeda’s theory explains many other behaviors and situations in areas beyond competition law. At the end of the day, it is about people adopting a simple pre-established view or prism that makes further reflection unnecessary which, in turn, makes the process of forming a view much easier. We do that all the time in many other fields, politics being one of them (if, for instance, one dogmatically assumes that State intervention is always bad (think of Tea Partisans…), then one has a simplistic solid view on many complex specific instances without the need for further reflection; yep, this is one of my recurring themes). Uncertainty and doubt feel troublesome, but certainties -even when mistaken- are comfortable, save a lot of effort and provide seemingly confident opinions.

Judges may at times certainly favor simple pre-defined solutions uncritically (Areeda blamed the fact that there were “too few judges experienced enough with the subject to resist” the temptation of applying previous rulings uncritically), but they’re not the only ones. Think, for instance, of a group which, by definition, is not experienced enough with the subject to resist the temptation to assume stuff uncritically: students.

In the past few days I’ve had various interactions with students from various backgrounds, and I have again been reminded of how new generations of competition lawyers almost universally coincide in the view that the case law and the decisional practice (particularly, but not exclusively, in the domain of Art. 102 TFEU) is fundamentally flawed, absurd, “ordoliberal” and almost crafted by lunatics. But once you scratch below this initial thought, it seems that for some resason students often feel it must necessarily be THE right answer even if they can’t always explain why (which is ironic when what’s criticized is the alleged lack of analytical content in current rules and doctrines). To be sure, I’m not saying that the case-law is perfect (which it probably isn’t, but one needs to understand it and to reflect on it in order to have ideas on whether and how it is to be improved), nor that this is the case of all students, nor that professors don’t do their job right (although not all of them are Areeda either), but I like it better when I see young lawyers who have reasoned doubts than when I see them with unreasoned certainties (I, for one, have very few competition law-related certainties; in fact, I’m not even sure of whether the criticism I’m expressing here is entirely justified). And false certainties may be more common in relatively complex yet non-scientific disciplines, like ours.

Drop by drop, this process whereby some people learn formed opinions instead of the tools with which to form them might also have a crucial impact on the evolution of the law. As new generations get to higher roles (clerks, then Judges, etc), their preconceptions may follow. And, as Areeda noted, it wouldn’t be until their expansion became ridiculous that the process of cutting back would begin (perhaps engendering an analogous process holding contrarian views).