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36 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 631 (2004-2005)
In Search of Economic Justice: Considering Competition and Consumer Protection Law

handle is hein.journals/luclj36 and id is 645 raw text is: In Search of Economic Justice: Considering Competition and Consumer Protection Law Spencer Weber Waller* INTRODUCTION In November 2003, I was invited to address the first summit conference of European competition and consumer protection officials held by the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission at their headquarters in Brussels. At that conference, officials gathered from the twenty-five nations that already were member states of the European Union (EU) or that would become member states as of May 1, 2004. These officials spent the better part of a day discussing the interactions and synergies between competition and consumer protection law. The goal was to create and deepen enforcement networks among the member states and between the member states and the EU officials in Brussels and to explore the possibilities for greater convergence between two bodies of law with very different histories and enforcement traditions.1 I was to be the lunch speaker for this august group--an American professor who cared deeply about both bodies of law--discussing how the two bodies of law related to each other. This task proved to be particularly complicated, both theoretically and in terms of how the laws are actually enforced, and it forced me to reflect long and hard about some items of faith that I had simply taken for granted. My thesis, then and now, is a simple one. Competition and consumer protection laws are intimately related, two sides of the same coin of consumer sovereignty and hence economic justice. Perhaps surprisingly, this relationship is only beginning to be recognized by academics and policy makers, and the way it all actually works in the * Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies, Loyola University Chicago School of Law. This essay is an expanded version of remarks delivered at the first summit conference of European competition and consumer protection officials, DG Comp, European Commission, Brussels, November 19, 2003. 1. Meeting of Directors General for Competition, Draft Agenda (Nov. 19, 2003) (on file with author).