CPP213 | Competition Law, Practice & Policy

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The seminar course on competition law will be an elective course and not mandated by the Bar Council or UGC (to the best of my knowledge). While the subject itself merits a stand-alone course, it develops on prior courses in economics and commercial regulation more generally.

The approach to teaching this course is to provide a basic foundational introduction to some key concepts in competition law and then focus on how those concepts have been implemented and interpreted by courts and tribunals in India. In doing so, I propose to include a comparative view of the practice in other jurisdictions and dedicate a significant portion to the “real-world” practical issues that a competition law practitioner will likely confront. Given that the course is an elective seminar course, I have consciously limited the time spent on theoretical aspects of the subject. This is a course designed to equip student practitioners and will primarily rely on case law and where necessary, journal articles, and commentary on specific topics.

Pedagogical method:

The method of teaching will be a mix of Socratic & seminar-style discussion. There will be no lectures. Since the course is designed to equip students to become practitioners of competition law- the emphasis is conceptual clarity; precision in writing; and court-room style advocacy. The evaluation pattern has been designed along these lines.

Describe the layout of the course:

The course is divided into three segments:

– The First Module (10 hours) – Is an introduction to key concepts in competition law which form the theoretical backbone for the course –

The Second Module (14 hours) – Focuses on “hot topics” confronting competition lawyers today. These are “real-world” issues which are the subject of decided or ongoing cases in India and elsewhere in the world.

– The Third Module (16 hours) – Focusses on the “practice” skills that will be required of competition lawyers in India and some other international jurisdictions. Inherent to this module will be a an advocacy exercise (designed to simulate a CCI hearing) which will instruct students on preparing for a “hearing” and will also form one component of their evaluation.