Legal Analysis and Criticism
Legal commentators have criticized the decision as not just a mistake but a compounding of the earlier mistake made in Federal Baseball and continued in Toolson. According to antitrust expert Kevin McDonald of Jones Day, Flood v. Kuhn is a "principle of antitrust law that is (1) indefensible as a matter of fact or policy, and (2) an embarrassment to the Court." Holmes' original decision has been misread by both later cases to imply a divination of congressional intent to exclude baseball and a prescription for congressional action to remedy that, he argues: "Just as Toolson blamed Holmes for a problem (an express statutory exemption) that he did not create, Flood blamed him for insisting on a solution (Congressional action) that he did not mention."
Yale law professor William Eskridge, a harsh critic of the decision, has called it "the most frequently criticized example of excessively strict stare decisis." It is often counterpointed to the Court's decision in the 1940 trust case Helvering v. Hallock, where Justice Felix Frankfurter explicitly rejected the idea, embraced by Blackmun in Flood, that the Court should consider congressional inaction as a tacit statement of acquiescence with one of its existing holdings, however questionable they may have seemed. Eskridge notes that there are many reasons besides express lack of intent that would forestall Congressional action to remedy a flawed Court decision.
Read more about this topic: Flood V. Kuhn
Famous quotes containing the words legal, analysis and/or criticism:
“Courage, then, for the end draws near! A few more years of persistent, faithful work and the women of the United States will be recognized as the legal equals of men.”
—Mary A. Livermore (1821–1905)
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)