Harry First Gives 2006 Lewis Bernstein Memorial Lecture

November 16, 2006 – Harry First, the Charles L. Denison Professor of Law at New York University School of Law delivered the 2006 Lewis Bernstein Memorial Lecture yesterday at the School of Law.  Professor First’s lecture was entitled Lost in Conversation: The Compensatory Function of Antitrust.

In the lecture, Professor First traced the history of the arguments used to justify antitrust law’s private right of action – from the original argument that a private right of action was needed to compensate victims of price fixing to the prevailing contemporary view that the private right of action is more important as a deterrent to anti-competitive practices.  Professor First then argued that this shift in justification has effected the way that courts interpret the antitrust laws, most notably in cases involving indirect purchasers and foreign victims.  He also noted that the federal government rarely invokes the civil treble damages remedy when victimized by price-fixing. 

The Bernstein lecture is named in honor of Lewis Bernstein ’38, long one of the Department of Justice’s chief antitrust litigators.  In his twenty-five year career in the Antitrust Division, most of which was spent as Chief of the Division’s Special Litigation Section, Lewis Bernstein supervised the litigation of many of the government’s leading antitrust cases.  The annual Memorial Lecture was established by his widow, Elaine Bernstein, and friends of the Bernstein family to enrich the atmosphere of the School of Law by bringing to the campus distinguished individuals who will interact with students, faculty, graduates and members of the legal community on a topic relating to Antitrust Law and Policy and other topics relative to the study of law.  School of Law Professor Edward D. Cavanagh organizes the Bernstein Lecture each year.

Professor First is the twelfth Bernstein Memorial Lecturer.  Past speakers have included John Shenefield, Steven Calkins, Thomas Kauper, William Kovacic, Eleanor Fox, Joel Klein, Robert Pitofsky, Thomas Sullivan, Spencer Waller, Andrew Gavil and Hon. Sarah Vance.