In recent years, two law review articles have proposed that the United States regulate commercial sports through a direct federal commission, rather than through traditional antitrust remedies. Nevertheless, the practical realities of commercial sports’ power to influence government policy offset the many theoretical advantages to creating a specialized regulatory body to oversee commercial sports. The commercial sports industry already possesses an extraordinarily strong lobbying arm that has successfully lobbied for special legislation, such as the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 and the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. If commercial sports ever were to become administratively regulated, sports leagues would likely be able to use their lobbying power to obtain even greater concessions under U.S. law. Consequently, this Article argues that, albeit imperfect, antitrust law remains the most practical way to regulate commercial sports leagues.
Washington and Lee Law Review - Response
Response
by Geoffrey Rapp
Professor Nathaniel Grow has produced a creative, thoroughly researched piece arguing that antitrust has failed in the context of professional sports and calling for the creation of a national-level federal regulatory agency to address anticompetitive conduct by the major leagues. I respond to his diagnosis of antitrust’s failings and to his prescription.
Response
by Dale A. Whitman
In his recent article, Tools of Ignorance: An Appraisal of Deficiency Judgments, Professor Alan Weinberger accurately identifies both the benefits and detriments of statutory “fair value” limitations on deficiency judgments. The principal benefit of these statutes, of course, is that they stand in the way of a windfall double recovery by mortgage creditors. In many cases there is little or no competitive bidding at foreclosure sales, leaving the way clear for the creditor to bid at a level far below the property’s market value and thus, gain both the full value of the property and the amount of a deficiency measured by the artificially low bid. This is simply an outrage, and the basic principles of fairness demand some means of preventing it. On the other hand, determining what fair value is—indeed, defining what we mean by fair value—is often left ambiguous by fair value statutes. Even if the meaning is clear, determining value by a war of expert appraisal witnesses is a messy, complex, expensive, and often inaccurate process
Response
by Michael A. Carrier & Christopher L. Sagers
In O’Bannon v. National Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, then-Chief Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a groundbreaking decision, potentially opening the floodgates for challenges to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) amateurism rules. The NCAA was finally put to a full evidentiary demonstration of its amateurism defense, and its proof was found emphatically wanting. We agree with Professor Edelman that O’Bannon could bring about significant changes, but only if the Ninth Circuit affirms. We write mainly to address the NCAA’s vigorous pending appeal and the views of certain amici, and to explain our strong support for the result at trial. Reversal of Judge Wilken’s comprehensive and thoughtful decision would thwart needed changes just as colleges are beginning to embrace them and would be mistaken as a matter of law. O’Bannon is a correct, justifiable, garden-variety rule-of-reason opinion and should be affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.
Response
by Sherman Clark
In this response to Marc Edelman’s Article, The District Court Decision in O’Bannon v. National Collegiate Athletic Association: A Small Step Forward for College-Athlete Rights, and a Gateway for Far Grander Change, 71 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 2319 (2014), I highlight a set of conceptual issues that must be confronted if courts are to craft a coherent and stable body of law governing the NCAA’s treatment of student-athletes. First, the value of the product at issue here—college sports—is intimately connected with the nature of the labor used to create it. Second, the nature of that value is amorphous, contingent, and greater than the sum of its parts. Third, the fairness arguments that drive much of the litigation in this area are based on tenuous assumptions about the relationship between the labor used to create the product and the value of the product.
Response
by Matthew J. Parlow
The O’Bannon decision made a significant change to one of the philosophical pillars of intercollegiate athletics in allowing for greater compensation for student athletes. At the same time, the court took only an incremental step in the direction of pay for college athletes: The decision was limited to football and men’s basketball players—as opposed to non-revenue-generating sports—and it set a yearly cap of $5,000 for each of these athletes. However, the court left open the possibility for—indeed, it almost seemed to invite—future challenges to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s restrictions on student-athlete compensation. In this regard, the court’s incremental step in college athlete pay may be a harbinger of more dramatic and structural changes to come in the college athletic system. While this Essay does not take a normative position on the legal or economic justifications for such a possible change in intercollegiate athletics, it does seek to describe some of the potential unintended consequences of a free(r) marketplace for student-athlete services. In particular, this Essay analyzes the possible implications and impact on Title IX, as well as college athletic opportunities and values more generally. In doing so, this Essay attempts to explain why the court’s more cautious approach may be needed going forward to balance the varied interest in the college athletic system.
Response
by William C. Banks
The role of the courts in judging the actions of government in wartime has ranged from extreme deference to careful probing of alleged government excesses over more than two centuries. The courts’ record has reflected the nature of the armed conflicts the United States has engaged in and the legal bases for the actions at issue. In the aggregate, the courts have served as a necessary counterweight to government overreaching in times of national security crisis. It is easy to underestimate the institutional problems confronting judges who are asked to make momentous decisions in times of national crisis—difficulties of fact-finding and assessing the risks of being wrong, among others. Yet no other part of government is as equipped as the judiciary to anchor the nation to its core values during a storm.
Professor Wayne McCormack (author of the original article) has the following to say about this Response:
“I am delighted that Professor Banks took the time and effort in this forum to delve further into the history of judicial involvement with wartime decisions. I think his and my conclusions are substantially similar. He very nicely sums up that ‘no other part of government is as equipped as the judiciary to anchor the nation to its core values during a storm.’ I have every reason to believe, as did Justice Brennan, that the nation will return to those values as the storm passes.”
Response
by Lyman P.Q. Johnson & Robert Ricca
This is a brief Response to Professor Mohsen Manesh’s extensive response to our original article, The Dwindling of Revlon. Our thesis is that today the iconic Revlon doctrine is, remedially, quite substantially diminished. Although Professor Manesh sets out to establish what he calls “the limits of Johnson’s and Ricca’s thesis,” we here maintain, as before, that there is little remedial clout to Revlon unless directors or others very significantly misbehave. We also criticize Delaware’s continuing use of the standard-of-conduct/standard-of-review construct in the fiduciary duty area. This rubric is unhelpful generally and strikingly so in the Revlon setting, as we note.
Response
by Mohsen Manesh
Nearly thirty years ago, in Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., the Delaware Supreme Court famously dictated that in certain transactions involving a “sale or change in control,” the fiduciary obligation of a corporation’s board of directors is simply to “get[] the best price for the stockholders.” Applying a novel remedial perspective to this iconic doctrine, in The Dwindling of Revlon, Professor Lyman Johnson and Robert Ricca argue that Revlon is today of diminishing significance. In the three decades since, the coauthors observe, corporate law has evolved around Revlon, dramatically limiting the remedial clout of the doctrine. In this Essay, I show how two recent Delaware Chancery Court decisions—Chen v. Howard-Andersen and In re Rural Metro—underscore the expansive reach of Revlon and, therefore, the limits of Johnson and Ricca’s thesis. Instead, I suggest the dwindling of Revlon, if it is indeed dwindling, may be best observed from what is happening outside the pressed edges of corporate law, where other competing bodies of business law have emerged rejecting Revlon’s fiduciary mandate.
