D.C. Circuit Quotes Shelanski and Sidak in United States v. Microsoft Corp. Decision

In the landmark antitrust decision United States v. Microsoft Corporation issued on June 28, 2001, the University of Chicago Law Review article by Howard A. Shelanski and J. Gregory Sidak entitled, "Antitrust Divestiture in Network Industries," was the first work of legal scholarship that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit quoted as authority in its 125-page opinion. To download a PDF version of the article, click here. Shelanski and Sidak propose a framework for assessing the costs and benefits of different remedies, particularly divestiture, in monopolization cases involving network industries. Their approach can assist a court or enforcement agency not only in analyzing the welfare effects of divestiture, but also in choosing more generally among alternative kinds of remedies. The framework would, for example, apply a court's choice between damages and injunctive remedies or between behavioral injunctions and structural injunctions. After developing the framework, Shelanski and Sidak apply it to the divestiture proposals made by the government in the Microsoft case. They argue that those proposals leave open important questions that must be answered before divestiture can be shown to be either the best remedial alternative or to create likely net gains in economic welfare.