Love Field – A Letter To Congress
Yesterday, seven law professors sent a letter to the ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary committees about Love Field and the Wright Amendment. The professors make three basic arguments:
1) that the agreement “utterly fails to help DFW area passengers”;
2) the mere repeal of the Wright Amendment would benefit passengers; and
3) the repeal of the Wright Amendment should not be accompanied by the agreement (which they argue is anti-competitive).
Here is the letter: Letter to Judiciary.pdf
The Dallas Business Journal reports:
Nine academics signed their names to the letter, including Shubha Ghosh, a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law. The letter was sent Tuesday to leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees by Darren Bush, an assistant law professor at the University of Houston Law Center. Bush first spoke out against the compromise in an Aug. 7 publication from the American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on antitrust analysis. In addition to fewer flights and higher fares for consumers, the Wright compromise could create immunity from antitrust laws for Dallas-Fort Worth’s two dominant airlines, the letter states. Also signing the letter are Mark Bauer, assistant professor at Stetson University College of Law in Florida; Peter Carstensen, professor at the University of Wisconsin; John M. Connor, industrial economics professor at Purdue University; John J. Flynn, professor of law emeritus at University of Utah; Warren Grimes, professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles; Max Huffman, visiting assistant professor of law at University of Cincinnati and Spencer Weber Waller, a professor and director of the Institute of Consumer Antitrust Studies at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports:
Kevin Cox, chief operating officer for D/FW, blasted the letter as “poppycock.” “Everybody’s got an opinion about the Wright Amendment, but to couch it as some sort of educated analysis is quite laughable,” Cox said. “Any antitrust lawyer has to prove that there are true antitrust issues that are based on facts and figures, not speculation.”
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September 12th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
[...] About two weeks ago, seven law professors sent a letter sent a letter to the ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary committees about Love Field and the Wright Amendment. Today, four “nationally recognized experts in antitrust law — including two former chairmen of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)” sent their own letter. According to the press release: The letter directly counters the arguments in the professors’ letter dated August 29th and says, “Like any compromise, the solution is not ideal from any single perspective, but it is easily the best attainable and far better than no compromise at all, which would mean a return to the acrimonious debate over repeal. What the professors do not seem to appreciate is that the alternative to the current legislative proposal is not some idealized model that would maximize competition, it is nothing at all.” [...]