Dr Niamh Dunne

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Regulation and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.

This module provides an overview of the major features of contemporary competition (antitrust) law. Competition law comprises a set of legal rules which aim to control the socially-harmful exercise of private market power, whether through hardcore cartels, single firm monopoly behaviour, or mergers that reduce structural competition. This is a discipline that has undergone a remarkable process of expansion in recent decades, and competition laws are now actively enforced in around 130 jurisdictions worldwide.

Instead of focusing on a particular regime, the module puts an emphasis on the fundamental debates underlying the adoption and evolution of this field, addressed in comparative perspective. Examples drawn primarily from EU and US competition law will be used by way of illustration. We will also consider on-going and often contentious debates in contemporary competition law, including the question of the optimal goals for competition enforcement, the appropriate role for economic analysis in this task, and the scope for regional divergences.

The course assumes no prior knowledge of competition law or economics, but aims to equip students to understand and analyse the key substantive elements found within most competition regimes. These include:

• Competition policy and basic concepts of antitrust economics;

• Anti-competitive agreements, including cartels and vertical restraints;

• Unilateral conduct rules, including refusal to deal and exclusionary practices; and

• Merger control, including horizontal and vertical mergers.

This course will have two hours of teaching content each week in Autumn Term. Several optional supplementary lectures will be provided to address more technical concepts in greater detail. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

All students are expected to produce one 1,500 word formative essay during the course.

• Whish & Bailey, Competition Law (10th ed., 2021);
• Jones & Sufrin, EU Competition Law: Cases and Materials (7th ed., 2019);
• Roger van den Bergh, Comparative Competition Law and Economics (2017); and
• Hovenkamp, The Antitrust Enterprise (2005).

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the spring exam period.