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67 UCLA L. Rev. 378 (2020-2021)
Antitrust as Allocator of Coordination Rights

handle is hein.journals/uclalr67 and id is 394 raw text is: Antitrust as Allocator of Coordination Rights Sanjukta Paul ABSTRACT The reigning antitrust paradigm has turned the notion of competition into a talisman, even as antitrust law in reality has functioned as a sorting mechanism to elevate one species of economic coordination and undermine others. Thus, the ideal state idea of competition and its companion, allocative efficiency, have been deployed to attack disfavored forms of economic coordination, both within antitrust and beyond. These include horizontal coordination beyond firm boundaries, democratic market coordination, and labor unions. Meanwhile, a very specific exception to the competitive order has been written into the law for one type of coordination, and one type only: that embodied by the traditionally organized, top-down business firm. This Article traces the appearance of this legal preference and reveals its logical content. It also explains why antitrust's firm exemption is a specific policy choice that cannot be derived from corporate law, contracts, or property. Indeed, because antitrust has effectively established a state monopoly on the allocation of coordination rights, we ought to view coordination rights as a public resource, to be allocated and regulated in the public interest rather than for the pursuit of only private ends. Intrafirm coordination is conventionally viewed as entirely private, buoyed up by the contractarian theory of the firm. But the contractarian view of the firm cannot explain antitrust's firm exemption and is inconsistent with the conventional justifications for it. This Article also briefly sketches policy choices that flow from the recognition that coordination rights are a public resource, focusing upon expanding the right to engage in horizontal coordination beyond firm boundaries. AUTHOR Assistant Professor of Law, Wayne State University. For their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this Article or in related discussions, I am grateful to Vincent Buccola, Brian Callaci, Cynthia Estlund, Amy Kapczynski, Karl Klare, Christopher Leslie, Suresh Naidu, John Newman, Randy Picker, Shayak Sarkar, Marshall Steinbaum, Nathan Tankus, Sandeep Vaheesan, Jon Weinberg, Steven Winter, and Noah Zatz. I am also grateful to participants in the Antitrust Scholars Roundtable at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law; faculty workshops at Ohio State and Wayne State law schools; a symposium on antitrust policy held at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy; and a panel discussion at Yale Law School. I thank Nathan Tankus for excellent research assistance, and for critical moral and intellectual support in the formation of some of these ideas. Last but not least, I am very grateful for the excellent work of the editors of the UCLA Law Review. All errors and omissions are mine. 67 UCLA L. REV. 378(2020)

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