New Competition Law Center at George Washington University

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

With Bill Kovacic leading the fight against anti-competitive conduct at the FTC as a Commissioner, George Washington University Law School has not been particularly active in antitrust scholarship in the last few years while Georgetown and George Mason law schools have hosted a number of excellent conferences.  However, thanks to George Washington Law alum and plaintiff's attorney Michael D. Hausfeld of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, P.L.L.C., on July 10, 2007, a United States District Court judge granted a motion to award a portion of a class-action settlement in the case of Diamond Chemical Company, Inc. v. Akzo Nobel Chemicals B.V. and Atofina Chemicals, Inc, et al. to George Washington University Law School to endow a Center for Competition Law.  This is a a $5.1 million Cy Pres award.  See details in the press release here.  No director for the Center has yet been announced.  I wonder if this center will be as plaintiff friendly in its programming as the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law run by Spencer Waller.  On Spencer, if you have not yet read his Thurman Arnold: A Biography (NYU Press, 2005), this would make for excellent summer reading.