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86 Tul. L. Rev. 859 (2011-2012)

handle is hein.journals/tulr86 and id is 867 raw text is: The Narcotic Effect of Antitrust Law in Professional Sports: How the Sherman Act Subverts Collective Bargaining Michael H. LeRoy* Using textual analysis and data from federal court opinions, I explore the relaonshp between collecdve bargainig and andtrust litigaton in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey My study draws from legal and industrial relations theories to explain how labor agreements inprofessionalsports am settledby collective bargaining or antitrust ligation. First, when courts do not defime the antitrust-labor law boundary so that labor disputes am exempt from their jurisdiedon, they open an alternadve path to bargaling these agrvements. Seconl when courts entertain antitrust lawsuits, they maise the odds that economic weapons under the NLRA will not be used because ofjudicial inclination to protect players from irparable harm and ijury esulting from league-imposed labor market restrictons Thb4 as this behavior becomes a pattern, collective bargaining is disrupted by faulty information as players, unions, and leagues guesstimate the odds that their diferences will be settled at a collective bargaining table orin a court supervised negotiation. Fourth, asplayers negotiate better ageements m court compaed to the bargaining table, they become addicted to this settlementprocess Applying the narcotic effect theory from industrial relations, I conclude that antitrust litigadon addicts players in football and basketball to the adjudicatory procedures of the Sherman Act-thereby replacirg collective bargaining. As long as courts entertain these sports lawsuis under the Sherman Act, collective bargaining will be subverted I. INTRODUCTION. ...................................... 860 II. THE DAWN OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS: PLAYER EFFORTS To ABOLISH LABORIMARKETRESTRICTIONS .............. .............863 A. Baseball: The Anomaly ofa TotalAntitrust Exemption ................ .................... 864 * C 2012 Michael H. LeRoy. Michael LeRoy is a professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations, and College of Law, at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. He has published extensively on strikes and lockouts, voluntary and mandatory arbitration, employee involvement teams, and more recently on collective bargaining and federal jurisdiction in sports labor disputes. Professor LeRoy has testified before the full U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, consulted at the request of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in connection with the Taft-Hartley labor dispute involving Pacific Maritime Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and served as an advisor to the President's Commission on the United States Postal Service. Professor LeRoy is currently writing a casebook that draws from materials in his course, Collective Bargaining in Sports and Entertainment. He owes a debt of gratitude to his students for stimulating this study. 859

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