Antitrust/Trade Law Overview

wschubert's Comment: I wanted to try and stimulate some discussion over the "generality" of antitrust laws -- I am a second year student and will be taking antirust law next semester. I am somewhat familiar with the field although I have no experience with cracking the law books in this area yet... To my understanding, antitrust laws might be fairly "general," but interestingly, the business practice at issue in a dispute is typically not something that a defendant will simply admit to in effort to end the controversy. I have heard professors and attorneys describe the antitust discovery process as kind of a classic "smoking gun" search. And even upon completion of discovery, a plaintiff's case is often based on circumstantial evidence. I guess I'm trying to argue that antitrust disputes can often be described as cases where both the plaintiff and defendant are quite clear on what the law is. Some activities are obviously illegal (e.g. bid-rigging, price-fixing, predatory pricing, etc.) The dispute, however, can often turn on whether the plaintiff can show that those activities actually occurred.