#ThrowbackThursday
A large number of antitrust lawyers are attending side-parties and receiving all sorts of prizes at the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting this week.
For those of you who have asked, we are not there as were dissapointed to see that the program did not feature the “high” point from last years’s conference… See here 😉
Chillin'Competition 
got the email with the winners: apparently Bill Kovavic was member of the jury which awarded the title of best article on general antitrust to … an article co-authored by Bill Kovavic. Did I read well?
Sampi
30 March 2017 at 9:01 am
Welll, yes, but the article is good and his co-author deserves the credit. Plus it was an inevitable outcome considering that the rival individual article (“Trump Antitrust”) in the category was not an individual article (actually, not even an article…). In any event, let’s not take these things too seriously. There are many more dubious awards around than these, which at least have the merit of making some publications freely available to anyone interested.
Alfonso Lamadrid
30 March 2017 at 9:41 am
OK. I do not question the quality of that article. Nor (obviously) do I question the qualities of Mr Kovavic (well-known and appreciated by the whole antitrust community). Furthermore, it is clear we are not talking about a Nobel Prize or the like… yet, if a competition/prize is organized then perhaps it is worth to try and make it as credible as possible. Wouldn’t you agree? Moreover, the fact that the competing article was not even a real article is not very convincing. Are you telling me that there were no other articles published in the entire 2016, the dozens and dozens of antitrust journals published worldwide, that could compete against the winning article? In other words, the fact that the runner up did not really qualify for the category chosen is, to my humble opinion, pointless: they could have chosen other articles for that category ! I do not claim to have the knowledge of the jury members on these matters but, still, I have read quite a few good articles in 2016 that could have potentially fallen in the category of ‘general antitrust’. (To be clear: I’m just playing devil’s advocate). If these prizes/competitions wants to have some credibility, they should probably avoid having persons that award prizes to themselves. It reminds me of the lawyers that pay to be allowed to deliver a speech in a conference.
Sampi
30 March 2017 at 10:01 am