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100 Blawg Honoree

2016 Antitrust Sentencing Symposium

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I am very excited to be a participant at the upcoming 2016 Antitrust Sentencing Symposium at George Mason University School of Law on June 21, 2016 from 8;30 am to 5:00 pm.  Below are just a few of the topics that will be covered by the nation’s leading practitioners and professionals (and me), as well as antitrust enforcers from around the world, to brainstorm the best approaches to drive deterrence with the punishment of antitrust offenses at the first ever ABA Antitrust Sentencing Symposium.

  • Isn’t there a better way to reach the goal of deterrence?
  • Have we reached a tipping point with the size of the fines imposed on corporate antitrust defendants?
  • Are there options to increasingly longer jail sentences for individual antitrust offenders to reach optimal deterrence?
  • Does it continue to make sense to provide for treble damages in follow-on private damage actions where prima facie liability is established?

I am on a panel, Are There Alternatives to Increasingly Longer Jail Sentences for Antitrust Offenders That Would Lead to More Optimal Deterrence? moderated by Kathryn Hellings, partner at Hogan Lovells LLP, and includes Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and Brent Snyder, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Criminal Enforcement, Antitrust Division, USDOJ. The full roster of faculty can be found here.

My contribution to the symposium will be a paper arguing that the ABA Antitrust Section should form a task force to study guideline reform, mirrored along the lines of the Criminal Justice Section Task Force on the Reform of Federal Sentencing for Economic Crimes.  I believe the current antitrust sentencing guidelines for individuals, departed from at a rate approaching 100%, are an impediment to optimal deterrence.  I hope the discussions at the Symposium will generate follow-up study to reform the United States Sentencing Guidelines for Antitrust Offenses. U.S.S.G 2R1.1.

You can register for the event here.  The program is quite a bargain.  It is free for ABA Antitrust Section members and includes 6.25 CLE credits.  This is the first ever ABA Antitrust Sentencing Symposium and your participation and input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

Comments

  1. The speakers at this event represent a very narrow slice of the spectrum of experts who have written about optimal deterrence in antitrust or the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. Most are attorneys with former experience as public prosecutors but who now mainly represent corporate defendants.

    There are very few full-time scholars at law schools, attorneys who specialize in representing plaintiffs in damages actions, or represent antitrust advocacy non-profits/consumer organizations. There are no economists or, apart from Judge Ginsberg himself, no legal scholars who have done serious (large-sample) empirical studies of sentencing outcomes.

    The chances that students of sentencing of price fixers will learn anything novel seem remote. Sorry, Robert, I am not in the least tempted to attend.