Online Edition '23
Consecutive
2023

Online
Article
Online Edition '23
Aligning Incentives: Finding a Better Way Forward with Special Purpose Acquisition Companies
Reid William Schreck
University of Chicago Law School '25

Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) first began to emerge in the 1990s as an alternative means to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) and take private companies public. With the rapid increase in popularity of SPACs in 2020 and early 2021, and with many politicians and mainstream celebrities trying to get a piece of the SPAC action, it has become far more important to evaluate carefully the merits and potential drawbacks of this process. This Article focuses primarily on addressing one key question: Are public investors who sign on to SPACs adequately protected by the current legal and regulatory frameworks, and, if not, what changes ought to be made going forward to help ensure they are?

Online
Article
Online Edition '23
Employee-Asset-Owner: How Messi’s Inter Miami Deal is Changing the Game for the American Soccer Industry
Allyson Swartzberg
University of Chicago Law School '25

In the summer of 2023, Lionel Messi agreed to a $150 million, two-and-a-half-year deal with Inter Miami, a U.S. Major League Soccer (MLS) team. Messi took this deal despite offers to return to FC Barcelona, where he has played before, and to play for Al-Hilal, a Saudi team where he was offered compensation over $500 million per season. To compete with these bids and ultimately sign Messi, Inter Miami offered a first-of-its-kind deal structure.

Online
Article
Online Edition '23
Blank Spaces: Analyzing Reforms to Chicago’s Commercial Vacant Lot Problem
Elizabeth Taddie Larson
University of Chicago Law School '25

Thank you to the University of Chicago Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship for inspiring this paper, specifically Grant Twombly for suggesting I look into this topic and to Professor Beth Kregor for her thoughts on the problems affecting reform efforts. 

The city of Chicago owns over 10,000 vacant lots with another 16,634 on their way to becoming city-owned due to back taxes and unpaid fees. These vacant properties can “devastate the neighborhood and block, undermine the neighbors’ quality of life and diminish the value of nearby properties[.]” Vacant lots are associated with crime, lack of housing and commercial spaces, and destabilization of the neighborhood, all while bringing in no tax revenue for the city. Chicago has tried numerous reforms to return vacant land to productive (and taxable) uses, but much of the city-owned land has stuck with the city.

Online
Article
Online Edition '23
There Is No “Passing On” an Injury You Never Suffered: Revisiting the Bypassed Distributor Problem in Antitrust Law
Bryan Gant
Bryan Gant is a partner in the Antitrust Group at White & Case LLP

The author would like to thank Zarka Shabir and Helen J. Gant for their invaluable assistance. Any views expressed in this publication are strictly those of the author and should not be attributed in any way to White & Case LLP or its clients.

This article argues that the accepted resolution to the “bypassed distributor” problem in antitrust law, although adopted by numerous courts, is wrong.  As a result of this error, courts have incorrectly permitted bypassed distributors to recover hundreds of millions of dollars despite never actually having suffered any injury.  Moreover, these courts have violated Article III of the U.S. Constitution, by permitting plaintiffs with no injuries, and thus no standing, to recover damages.  Courts should therefore revisit the bypassed distributor problem.