Call For Papers
Leniency: Effectiveness and Fairness
Sixteenth CLaSF Workshop, London, Thursday 2 September 2010
City Law School, City University, Grays Inn, London
Call for Papers
As Scott Hammond, Director of Criminal Antitrust Enforcement in the US Department of Justice has said, 'The single most significant development in cartel enforcement is the proliferation of effective leniency programs. The advent of leniency programs has completely transformed the way competition authorities around the world detect, investigate, and deter cartels'.
Whilst leniency programmes have been extremely successful at uncovering cartels there are numerous questions surrounding leniency programmes. On the one hand there are debates as to what constitutes the most effective form of leniency programme for uncovering cartels. There is considerable controversy for instance concerning the effectiveness of the EU Leniency Notice compared with the US Leniency Programme. There are further questions as to the necessary parallel measures necessary to be taken to underpin the programme such as limiting or eliminating the exposure to damages of leniency applicants. There are further questions as to how far it is possible to extend the scope of the leniency programme from corporate to individual whistleblowers. The UK Office of Fair Trading has for instance introduced a limited form of payment for whistleblowers. Can such payment systems be developed further, should they be?
On the other hand numerous more critical questions concern leniency programmes. There is the over-arching morality issue of providing leniency. Should price-fixers really be given a free pass for participating in a cartel? Even if one accepts some form of leniency, how far should moral concerns shape leniency programmes? There are also significant due process concerns with leniency such as whether competition agencies take sufficient due diligence of the evidence they receive from applicants and provide sufficient opportunities for defendants to challenge such evidence. Can leniency also persuade businesses to seek to expand the notion of price-fixing so that immunity can be obtained? This is a question raised in some of the hub and spoke cases.
There are also concerns that as leniency procedures spread across the world the effectiveness of leniency is undermined. Different national leniency regimes make it difficult and costly to effectively apply for leniency. How far can this ‘leniency burden’ be managed? What are likely to be the most successful solutions to this burden? For instance, soft harmonization combined with a form of leniency registry run by the International Competition Network?
A wide range of papers concerning these and other issues relating to leniency policies are invited for the 16th CLaSF workshop.
Deadlines
Please contact Professor Alan Riley, at alan.riley.1@city.ac.uk with an abstract of 500 to 1,000 words by no later than Friday 25 June and decisions on successful submissions will be taken by Monday, June 28, 2010.
Submission of presentation/draft paper is also required a week prior to the workshop.
Papers presented at the workshop can be submitted to the Competition Law Review editorial board with a view to being published in the Review. Note that the Review is a fully refereed scholarly law journal: Submission does not guarantee publication.
