802
Opinion of the Court
transactions. A concerted agreement to terms (a "cartelization") is "a way of obtaining and exercising market power by concertedly exacting terms like those which a monopolist might exact." L. Sullivan, Law of Antitrust 257 (1977). The parties to such an agreement (the members of a cartel) are not engaging in a boycott, because:
"They are not coercing anyone, at least in the usual sense of that word; they are merely (though concertedly) saying 'we will deal with you only on the following trade terms.'
". . . Indeed, if a concerted agreement, say, to include a security deposit in all contracts is a 'boycott' because it excludes all buyers who won't agree to it, then by parity of reasoning every price fixing agreement would be a boycott also. The use of the single concept, boycott, to cover agreements so varied in nature can only add to confusion." Ibid. (emphasis added).
Thus, if Captain Boycott's tenants had agreed among themselves that they would refuse to renew their leases unless he reduced his rents, that would have been a concerted agreement on the terms of the leases, but not a boycott.2 The tenants, of course, did more than that; they refused to engage in other, unrelated transactions with Boycott—e. g., selling him food—unless he agreed to their terms on rents. It is
2 Under the Oxford English Dictionary definition, of course, this example would not be a "boycott" because the tenants had not suspended all relations with the Captain. But if one recognizes partial boycotts (as we and Justice Souter do), and if one believes (as Justice Souter does but we do not) that the purpose of a boycott can be to secure different terms in the very transaction that is the supposed subject of the boycott, then it is impossible to explain why this is not a boycott. Under Justice Souter's reasoning, it would be a boycott, at least if the tenants acted "at the behest of" (whatever that means), ante, at 792, the Irish Land League. This hypothetical shows that the problems presented by partial boycotts (which we agree fall within § 3(b)) make more urgent the need to distinguish boycotts from concerted agreements on terms.
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