The U.S.-European Conflict Over the Internationalization of Antitrust Law: A Legal Experience Perspective

Abstract

“Do we take the next step in the internationalization of competition law?” This question is at the center of the conflict over the “globalization” of antitrust law (or, more generically, competition law). Conceptually, the step is a big one. Legally and politically, it may be even bigger. It would move from a normative regime in which states (including, for these purposes, the European Union) rely exclusively on their own domestic legal systems to combat restraints on competition to one in which a framework of multilateral commitments conditions their responses. It would create a new and specifically transnational antitrust regime for the global economy, and one reason why the issue is drawing so much attention is that some see it as prefiguring the process of normative globalization generally.

Another reason for this attention is that these issues are the site for a conflict between the European Union and the United States. This essay will look at the conflict from a perspective that has seldom been utilized in any systematic way in this context. I identify a set of experiential factors that influence European and U.S. perspectives and positions in the conflict and thus structure the conflict itself. Here, I look at the conflict through a lens that focuses on the role of legal experience in shaping the conflict.

Keywords: antitrust law, competition law, internationalization, globalization, United States, European Union, legal experience

JEL Classification: K19, K21, K33, K42