Word: posner
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Posner's decidedly free-market views mean that he starts out as an antitrust skeptic. He's argued that regulation of monopolies is often a mistake, and that in many cases government intervention does more harm than good. But he has also shown an inclination to follow established law and has written approvingly of the AT&T breakup. His admirers say he won't approach this case with ideological preconceptions. "Labels are meaningless," insists University of Chicago Law School Dean Daniel Fischel. "He's completely unpredictable in his views...
...appointing Posner, Jackson gave something to each side. Microsoft gets a mediator who is close to its thinking about government intervention. Posner may be reluctant to back some of the more extreme remedies Microsoft's critics are calling for. At the very least, he's likely to give the software giant a friendlier hearing than Jackson, whose findings of fact last month were a down-the-line rebuff...
...Justice Department, for its part, gets a mediator who will have credibility when he lays down the law for Microsoft. Trial watchers have conjectured that Gates & Co. may already have given up hope of prevailing before Jackson, and may be counting on getting him reversed on appeal. The conservative Posner is in sync with many of the judges in Washington who would hear that appeal. "He's going to be able to tell Microsoft that if they're counting on the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court to vindicate them completely, that's not going to happen," says George...
...other words, Posner may be the perfect mediator: someone each side is a little afraid of. What happens next? Posner will probably meet with the parties together and separately to hunt for common ground. (One question: Will Posner and Bill Gates be sitting down for a chat?) Count on the parties to be closemouthed throughout the negotiations. "We're not even going to talk about the food we ate," Justice Department lawyer David Boies said after the first day's meeting. If talks fail, it's back to court in late February for the next phase: arguments over Judge Jackson...
...possible, however, that Posner could make all that unnecessary. One path the negotiations are likely to explore is spinning off Microsoft's operating-systems division, which makes Windows, into its own company. That would track the logic of Judge Jackson's findings of fact: that it's not illegal for Microsoft to have an operating-systems monopoly, but it is illegal to leverage the monopoly to gain an unfair advantage in other markets. Carving Windows out of Microsoft would probably be sufficiently dramatic to please the Justice Department. It might not thrill Microsoft, but it would be preferable...