Antitrust Paradox

Customer Reviews:

Polemic, but good.......2003-01-22

When you read this book, keep in mind Bork sold out to the populist critics of Microsoft for a fee, and repudiated this book. Which proves that economic theory is great at the macro level, but, at the micro level, game theory beats out.

This is why gains for many are cancelled out by gains for a few that are willing to lobby government (or serve as expensive consultants to their paymasters, as in the case of Bork)

And why economics is but an extension of politics, and, at the end of the day, even inefficient economics can propigate for years, decades, centuries and even millinieums (India, China).

Misinterpreting the word "efficiency".......2002-07-26

I have enjoyed other writing by Judge Bork. Unfortunately, in "The Antitrust Paradox" Judge Bork misinterprets the word "efficiency" as it applies to antitrust law. U.S. antitrust law was designed to advance Pareto or economic efficiency, not business or productive efficiency. That misunderstanding leads Judge Bork to propose, in essence, the following Carrollian extended syllogism:
Antitrust law advances "efficiency" and condemns monopoly
Consumer welfare is the goal of antitrust law
Consumer welfare is advanced by lower prices
Monopolists are more "efficient" and provide lower prices
to consumers by economies of scale
Monopolists advance consumer welfare
Monopoly is "efficient" and should be legal
Lest we forget, John D. Rockefeller lowered the consumer price of kerosene approximately ten-fold while he was crushing smaller competitors. With all due respect to Judge Bork, I don't think that is the type of "efficiency" a free, commercial society needs.

Antitrust or Maximization of Consumer Welfare.......2001-10-10

In the Antitrust Paradox, Judge Robert H. Bork gives a fascinating, though demanding, review of the most important antitrust issues in the United States. The central, pragmatic thesis of Bork is maximization of consumer welfare (also called economic efficiency) and not the protection of small businesses in addressing any antitrust issue. Unfortunately, the legislative, executive and judiciary branches of power as well as the practicing bar have not always shown consistency in making, interpreting, and applying antitrust rules. The main reason for their shared sub-optimal performance in that area is the too-often absence of a rudimentary understanding of market economics according to Bork. As a practicing marketer and lawyer, I agree with his observation. Law and economics are two complementary disciplines that should be taught together as part of the academic requirements or at least whose teaching could be made optional at the undergraduate level in our universities.

Essential Reading........2000-06-14

The Antitrust Paradox is the most important book on antitrust ever written. It is a scholarly, yet accessible, examination of the nation's antitrust laws, the history and policies behind them, and their application from their inception to today. Through the book and the policies advanced in it, Judge Bork has had a profound impact on antitrust scholarship and practice. As a result, the book is essential reading for antitrust practitioners, scholars, and those having any interest in the subject. Truly a seminal work.

The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico

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The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico
Kevin J. Middlebrook
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico
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This important interdisciplinary work makes original contributions to the study of the state-society relations in Latin America and to the comparative analysis of labor's role in regime change. Middlebrook's theoretical framework identifies the principal dimensions of elite control over mass participation in postrevolutionary authoritarian regimes and highlights the most important aspects of Mexican authoritarianism. By demonstrating organized labor's central importance in the formation and evolution of Mexico's distinctive authoritarian regime, Middlebrook also lays the basis for a major reinterpretation of key features of twentieth-century Mexican politics.

"Any scholar interested in Latin American social and political questions over the last one hundred years will sooner or later read this book. Mexicanists worth their salt will read it as soon as they can get it. The scholarship is outstandingly sound. It is rigorous in conceptualization and analysis, and in the historical parts as good as the best histories of Mexican labor and politics." -- John Womack Jr., Harvard University

Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe: The Paradox of Inclusion (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

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Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe: The Paradox of Inclusion (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)
Joel F. Handler
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

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Comparing welfare policies in the U.S. and Western Europe aimed at the "workless" population, this study notes that the European labor policies of welfare services offer the best method of bringing the socially excluded back into mainstream society. Despite differences in ideology and practice, Joel Handler argues that there are also significant similarities between the U.S. and the Europeans, especially in field-level practices that serve to exclude the most vulnerable. The author examines strategies for reform and concludes with an argument for a basic income guarantee.

The Part-time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Life, Family and Gender

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The Part-time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Life, Family and Gender
Cynthia Epstein
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Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (Yale Fastback Series)
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Today's professionals, especially women, are caught in a time paradox: can they build a career and a family at the same time? The Part-time Paradox explores the conflict and tension between the time demands of career and family life, and the choice of part-time work as a solution.

The changing demographics of the family and the work place make it increasingly difficult for both men and women to meet the escalating time pressures facing a doctor, lawyer or manager. This book examines the social problems associated with demanding work schedules and choices, and also illustrates successful alternatives to full-time employment. It draws on interviews with attorneys in large law firms, in-house corporate counsels, and government service in order to explore the multiple dimensions of the part-time work solution. Although attitudes are beginning to change, one of the greatest impediments to part-time work is the stigma attached to it in many organizations, and the consequences for the careers of individuals who take it. Professionals define themselves, in part, by their commitment to overtime. The authors reveal how cultural perspectives of the "true professional," part-time work, and stereotypes about gender roles can influence both an individual's decision making process and office policy. They show that in an environment where professionals perceive part-time work as deviant, it may require not just perserverance, but also a trade-off between time flexibility and professional status.

The authors consider issues ranging from job security and the consequences of new technology, to the economics of part-time work and the division of labor in the family. The Part-time Paradox provides a timely overview of a growing crisis, as part-time and flex-time work arrangements increase.

Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox (Studies on Law and Social Control)

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For general study

Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox (Studies on Law and Social Control)
John Owen Haley
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Hardcover

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Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan
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This book offers a comprehensive interpretive study of the role of law in contemporary Japan. Haley argues that the weakness of legal controls throughout Japanese history has assured the development and strength of informal community controls based on custom and consensus to maintain order--an
order characterized by remarkable stability, with an equally significant degree of autonomy for individuals, communities, and businesses. Haley concludes by showing how Japan's weak legal system has reinforced preexisting patterns of extralegal social control, thus explaining many of the fundamental
paradoxes of political and social life in contemporary Japan.

Customer Reviews:

For general study.......2000-06-23

It worth reading, I think, for social study. Legal view is general but essential to understand the roots of Japanese social model. It can be interesting for the politicians, not the lawyers.

Cardozo on the law: Including the nature of the judicial process, The growth of the law, The paradoxes of legal science, Law and literature

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Cardozo on the law: Including the nature of the judicial process, The growth of the law, The paradoxes of legal science, Law and literature
Benjamin N Cardozo
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Homelessness Amid Affluence: Structure and Paradox in the American Political Economy

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Homelessness Amid Affluence: Structure and Paradox in the American Political Economy
Michael H. Lang
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
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Approaching the problem of homelessness from a broad public policy perspective, Lang focuses on the American political economy and how it permits community development patterns based on racism and self-interest. This interdisciplinary study challenges the belief that homelessness is entirely due to the Reagan administration's cutbacks. Instead, it suggests the need for reform in our housing and employment policies. The book reviews competing socioeconomic paradigms that can explain why meaningful and effective programs are difficult to enact. Homelessness Amid Affluence discusses housing, community development patterns, economic segregation, and problems of the urban underclass, as well as proposed solutions. The interdisciplinary nature and historical perspective of this volume make it informative reading for sociologists, social workers, policymakers, and researchers. This volume is divided into five sections. The first section provides a conceptual overview. Section Two deals with the urban policy context from which a solution to homelessness must emerge. Section Three covers low-cost housing while Section Four deals with specific policies and programs developed in response to the needs of the homeless. A case study based on the author's experience with the efforts of Camden County, New Jersey is included. The last section analyzes some new policy approaches and ends with an assessment of the likely policy outcomes to emerge from this continuing debate.

Judicial Power and the Charter: Canada and the Paradox of Liberal Constitutionalism

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Destined to be a Canadian Classic

Judicial Power and the Charter: Canada and the Paradox of Liberal Constitutionalism
Christopher P. Manfredi
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

In 1982, Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms became law and thereby significantly changed the Canadian political process. In surveying the changing relationship between Canada's legal and political structures. Judicial Power and the Charter focuses on one of the most problematic aspects of the relationship between judicial power and 'liberal constitutionalism': the use of of judicial power to review and to nullify or modify policies enacted by democratically accountable decision makers. In particular, the book examines a paradox a the heart of this relationship whereby the very mechanism designed to safeguard constitutionalism can become its greatest threat--a short of dictatorship of the courts. In this new edition, Manfredi refines his original argument and brings the content completely up to date. There is an incorporation of all major cases decided by the Supreme Court since the original publication and engagement in the bigorous debates that have emerged among political scientists.

Customer Reviews:

Destined to be a Canadian Classic.......2000-03-24

McGill University Professor of Political Science Christopher Manfredi has written a superb book about the place of judicial review in democracy. While focussing on Canada, Judicial Power and the Charter should be of interest to those students of both law and political science who are interested in the balance between the courts and the legislature.

Manfredi's probing analysis delves deeply into the relationship between the courts and the people's elected representatives. He argues both that the courts should defer more to the will of the people and that elected representatives must be more assertive in promoting and protecting rights.

The "paradox" of liberal constitutionalism according to Manfredi, is that courts, the very bodies designed to protect rights, may become the greatest threats to our constitutional rights.

Book Description

"The general as well as the more scholarly discourse on democracy has long been guided by two contradictory assumptions. On the one hand it has been assumed that there is a natural human predisposition to democracy, an assumption increasingly prevalent and popular following the breakup of the Soviet regime and many authoritarian regimes in Southern Europe and Latin America. On the other hand, it has been assumed from their very inception that democratic regimes were aware of their fragility. This awareness was built, to some degree, on the political discourse of antiquity, but it was rooted above all in the direct experience of the modern era."--from the introduction

Paradoxes of Democracy is an essay on the inherent weaknesses and surprising strengths of democratic government by one of the most productive and learned scholars in the social sciences.

Shmuel Eisenstadt opens with observations on divergent theories of democracy and closes with a discussion of mechanisms by which democratic regimes incorporate into their own structures the movements of protest that seem to challenge their existence. In between he courses through the roots of democratic theory in modern culture, the contradictions and tensions prompted by those roots, and some of the historical manifestations of contradiction. Eisenstadt focuses on the most important conditions -- especially on different patterns of collective identity -- which influence the extent to which democratic regimes are able to incorporate themes of protest and social movements and thus ensure their common survival.

Customer Reviews:

Obscurity overwhelms the content.......2002-10-23

One of the developments from the Enlightenment was the belief that man could analyze the workings of society and in essence reconstruct society based on those findings. Confidence in their social and political understandings was a factor in leading men to construct democracies. Invariably such constructs are more complex than originally foreseen. The author points out that democracies invariably contain some inherent tensions.

For some the construction of a democracy is a "technocratic" project to design a set of institutions and rules/laws, adherence to which is necessary for an orderly society. The emphasis on such a framework was usually motivated by the view that rights and civil society exist prior to government and need to be protected by a system of checks and balances. The "good" society protects a multiplicity of interests from governmental encroachment.

Yet others are interested in reconstituting society based more on a "moral or religious vision." They desire the government to become much more a part of society to enforce a "totalistic" vision, contrary to a pluralistic view. The constraints of the institutions and representative bodies of the "technocrats" may be seen as a hindrance and unnecessary to achieving a good society.

In addition, some emphasize widespread citizen participation in all facets of society, eschewing being confined to simply voting. Such participatory democrats are more concerned with the inequalities of social power and see the state as the means to ensure equal participation in society.

The author points out that the drawing of the boundaries of what can legitimately be controlled politically has been a constant source of tension in modern democracies, much as the tradeoff between liberty and equality. It may be counterintuitive for those with political and social power, but the author insists that democracies must be able to accommodate the "symbols and themes of protest" to remain viable. Failure to do so can lead to a breakup or demise of a democracy.

This book is a difficult read. It is rather theoretical containing lengthy and complex sentences with little relief in practical digressions. For many the obscurity of the book may be greater than any paradoxes in democracy. For the brave or academically inclined, there may be enough in this small book to justify the effort of digging through it.

More than is dreamt of in Rawls' philosophy?.......2000-10-31

All is not well with contemporary democracy. Eisenstadt outlines two conflicting theories of democracy: "Constitutional," i.e. procedural, and "participatory." The first emphasizes correct democratic procedure but cannot command allegiance in the absence of a strong adherence to national and religious values. The second emphasizes community, in its extreme form at the expense of limitations such as ethics and the rule of law. Democracies exist in tension between these two perspectives.

Modern democracies exist, as well, in the shadow of what Eisenstadt calls the cultural and political programs of modernity. Social protest movements are a permanent feature of modern societies; they perennially arise, and existing "establishments" must find ways to accomodate them. Social and political fragmentation, or on the other hand Jacobinism (totalitarianism), are always possible outcomes. The social "perpetual motion" of modern societies, including democracies, hasn't ended just because Communism fell. They remain vulnerable to the potentially extreme outcomes of social conflict, and Eisenstadt ends his book on a somber note, pointing out the eroding stability of democratic societies most of us would like to think are strong and secure.

Eisenstadt thinks that strong national and religious identity are important in reinforcing the cohesion of society and preventing the emergence of extreme political outcomes. This is of course the opposite of the Rawlsian argument. Institutional development also matters. Being a sociologist, he concentrates on showing how social forces and institutional structures help determine political outcomes. This book makes uncomfortable reading for someone, like this reviewer, whose country lacks most of the social and political background Eisenstadt identifies as helpful in maintaining the cohesion, and hence the potential for openness, of society.

This tension hasn't gone away simply because Communism collapsed. Eisenstadt insists that the problems of, on the one hand, flagging commitment to public values, and on the other, the threat of antidemocratic mov

The Paradoxes of Legal Science
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The Paradoxes of Legal Science
Benjamin N. Cardozo
Manufacturer: Lawbook Exchange Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 158477097X

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Cardozo, Benjamin. The Paradoxes of Legal Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1928. v, 142 pp. Reprinted 2000 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 00-024469. ISBN-13: 978-1-58477-097-8. ISBN-10: 1-58477-097-X. Cloth. $75.

* Here the influential Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Benjamin Cardozo [1870-1938] examines the nature of the relationship between justice and law. "His many references in these lectures to Greek philosophy show how great a part his early classical training played in the formation of his ideas; in relating his general principles to the concrete cases which, in his words, he used as a kind of legal litmus paper, he was a true Aristotelian.": Arthur L. Goodhart, Five Jewish Lawyers of the Common Law 59-60.

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