Event Title
Consent Decree Settlements by Administrative Agencies in Antitrust and Employment Discrimination: Optimizing Public and Private Interests
Location
Duke Law School
Start Date
6-2-1976 8:45 AM
End Date
6-2-1976 10:00 AM
Description
Several recent developments have shifted the attention of legal minds to an area of administrative law too often neglected: the settlement process utilized by enforcement agencies to resolve questions of compliance with their governing statutes. Although each of these settlements is well-deserving of careful scholarly examination, the focus of the present Article is broader than an evaluation of the merits of any particular agency action. Rather, our purpose is to consider the settlement process itself with attention to the intersection of private and public interests. In the antitrust area it has been said that "the consent settlement procedures as currently implemented by the Antitrust Division reflect what is really a process of administrative adjudication confirmed by consent decree."' e Hopefully, our concern with process--free of -the complications of applying intricate substantive law to involved factual situations-will yield insights the significance of which might otherwise escape observation. In sum, then, the discussion which follows will attempt to construct a general theory of the settlement process in terms of its aims and methods for ensuring that those aims are in fact pursued by enforcement agencies. In so doing, we will draw upon the learning available from several different substantive areas.
Related Paper
Michael J. Zimmer & Charles A. Sullivan, Consent Decree Settlements by Administrative Agencies in Antitrust and Employment Discrimination: Optimizing Public and Private Interests, 1976 Duke Law Journal 163-224 (1976)
Available at: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol25/iss2/1Consent Decree Settlements by Administrative Agencies in Antitrust and Employment Discrimination: Optimizing Public and Private Interests
Duke Law School
Several recent developments have shifted the attention of legal minds to an area of administrative law too often neglected: the settlement process utilized by enforcement agencies to resolve questions of compliance with their governing statutes. Although each of these settlements is well-deserving of careful scholarly examination, the focus of the present Article is broader than an evaluation of the merits of any particular agency action. Rather, our purpose is to consider the settlement process itself with attention to the intersection of private and public interests. In the antitrust area it has been said that "the consent settlement procedures as currently implemented by the Antitrust Division reflect what is really a process of administrative adjudication confirmed by consent decree."' e Hopefully, our concern with process--free of -the complications of applying intricate substantive law to involved factual situations-will yield insights the significance of which might otherwise escape observation. In sum, then, the discussion which follows will attempt to construct a general theory of the settlement process in terms of its aims and methods for ensuring that those aims are in fact pursued by enforcement agencies. In so doing, we will draw upon the learning available from several different substantive areas.
Comments
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