Cite as: 509 U. S. 764 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
that "the [S. E. U. A.] defendants could have [managed to cut the targets off from reinsurance] by prompting reinsurance companies to refuse to deal with nonmembers." Ante, at 789. Even assuming that is what happened, all that can be derived from S. E. U. A. is the proposition that one who prompts a boycott is a co-conspirator with the boycotters. For with or without the defendants' prompting, the rein-surers' refusal to deal in S. E. U. A. was a boycott, membership in the association having no discernible bearing upon the terms of the refused reinsurance contracts.
Justice Souter suggests that we have somehow mistakenly "posit[ed] . . . autonomy on the part of the reinsurers." Ante, at 792. We do not understand this. Nothing in the complaints alleges that the reinsurers were deprived of their "autonomy," which we take to mean that they were coerced by the primary insurers. (Given the sheer size of the Lloyd's market, such an allegation would be laughable.) That is not to say that we disagree with Justice Souter's contention that, according to the allegations, the reinsurers would not "have taken exactly the same course of action without the intense efforts of the four primary insurers." Ibid. But the same could be said of the participants in virtually all conspiracies: If they had not been enlisted by the "intense efforts" of the leaders, their actions would not have been the same. If this factor renders otherwise lawful conspiracies (under McCarran-Ferguson) illegal, then the Act would have a narrow scope indeed.
Perhaps Justice Souter feels that it is undesirable, as a policy matter, to allow insurers to "prompt" reinsurers not to deal with the insurers' competitors—whether or not that refusal to deal is a boycott. That feeling is certainly understandable, since under the normal application of the Sherman Act the reinsurers' concerted refusal to deal would be an unlawful conspiracy, and the insurers' "prompting" could make them part of that conspiracy. The McCarran-
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