Makris, Stavros;
(2025)
Competition Law as an Argumentative Practice.
UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society: London, UK.
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Abstract
This paper contends that the indeterminacy and persistent disagreements inherent in competition law are not transitory flaws but fundamental features that enable the discipline to adapt to complex market realities and epistemic change. Traditional approaches – top-down axiomatic reasoning, which seeks a single normative anchor, and bottom-up doctrinalism, emphasizing case-by-case evolution – are both rooted in economic formalism and legal positivism, leading them to mistakenly treat indeterminacy as a technical gap to be resolved. Such models overlook the crucial role of value judgments in competition law, instead framing it as a technocratic domain governed by economic analysis and doctrinal consistency alone. Drawing on interpretivist theories, this paper introduces the Argumentative Practice Model, which reconceptualizes competition law as an inherently argumentative and interpretive field. Here, the content of legal norms evolves through ongoing deliberation among values, doctrine, and extra-legal knowledge. Rather than eliminating indeterminacy, this model regards it as intrinsic and productive—legal meaning emerges through dynamic interpretive practices that combine extra-legal knowledge, and doctrinal analysis with principled value judgments. The paper illustrates this thesis with case studies on both anticompetitive agreements and abuse of dominance, showing how the evolution of EU competition law cannot be explained by legal positivism or economic formalism alone but emerges through principled, context-sensitive adjudication. Ultimately, the paper contends that embracing competition law’s argumentative character – its openness to interpretive debate and plurality of values – is essential for preserving its relevance, adaptability, and integrity in the face of digitalization, epistemic change, and shifting socio-economic priorities.
| Type: | Report |
|---|---|
| Title: | Competition Law as an Argumentative Practice |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/cles/research-papers |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Laws |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214774 |
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