Dr. Miles is Dead. Now What?: Structuring a Rule of Reason for Minimum Resale Price Maintenance

This article critiques six approaches that have been proposed for evaluating minimum RPM and offers an alternative approach. The six approaches critiqued are (1) the Brandeisian, unstructured rule of reason; (2) Judge Posner\u27s rule of per se legality; (3) the approach advocated by 27 states in the recent Nine West case; (4) the approach adopted by the Federal Trade Commission in that case; (5) the approach advocated by economists William Comanor and F.M. Scherer; and (6) the approach proposed in the Areeda & Hovenkamp Antitrust Law treatise. Finding each of these approaches deficient, the article proposes an alternative evaluative approach that harnesses economic learning and allocates proof burdens in a manner that minimizes the sum of decision and error costs, thereby maximizing the net social benefits of RPM regulation