808
Opinion of the Court
Justice Souter also describes reinsurers as being "outside the primary insurance industry." Ante, at 789. That is technically true (to the extent the two symbiotic industries can be separated) but quite irrelevant. What matters is that the scope and predictability of the risks assumed in a reinsurance contract depend entirely upon the terms of the primary policies that are reinsured. The terms of the primary policies are the "subject-matter insured" by reinsurance, Carter, supra, at 4, so that to insist upon certain primary-insurance terms as a condition of writing rein-surance is in no way "artificial"; and hence for a number of reinsurers to insist upon such terms jointly is in no way a "boycott." 6
Justice Souter seems to believe that a nonboycott is converted into a boycott by the fact that it occurs "at the behest of," ante, at 789, or is "solicited" by, ibid., competitors of the target. He purports to find support for this implausible proposition in United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Assn., 322 U. S. 533 (1944), which involved a classic boycott, by primary insurers, of competitors who refused to join their price-fixing conspiracy, the South-Eastern Underwriters Association (S. E. U. A.). The conspirators would not deal with independent agents who wrote for such companies, and would not write policies for customers who insured with them. See id., at 535-536. Moreover, Justice Black's opinion for the Court noted cryptically, "[c]ompanies not members of S. E. U. A. were cut off from the opportunity to rein-sure their risks." Id., at 535. Justice Souter speculates
6 Once it is determined that the actions of the reinsurers did not constitute a "boycott," but rather a concerted agreement to terms, it follows that their actions do not constitute "coercion" or "intimidation" within the meaning of the statute. That is because, as previously mentioned, such concerted agreements do "not coerc[e] anyone, at least in the usual sense of that word," L. Sullivan, Law of Antitrust 257 (1977), and because they are precisely what is protected by McCarran-Ferguson immunity.
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