Cases and Materials on Antitrust
Files
Description
Antitrust law once reflected broad, value-based policy, informed by the enacting Congresses’ distrust of bigness and power and their concern for economic opportunity on the merits. But in the mid to late 1970s, the Supreme Court put a cap on the growing body of antitrust constraints, and in the early 1980s, a new Administration turned the old antitrust on its head. In 1981 the Justice Department, taking a leaf from Chicago School economics, proclaimed that the sole role for antitrust is to stop inefficient transactions; and it asserted that few transactions are inefficient because the market is a robust check on inefficient behavior. Government enforcement since 1981 has focused almost entirely on blatant cartelization. As this book goes to press, minimal antitrust is still the rule of thumb amid speculation about what changes further time may bring. There are compelling reasons to study antitrust. First, antitrust is a unique blend of intellectual theory, social policy, political economy, microeconomics and law. Thus, to study antitrust is to engage in a interdisciplinary enterprise that informs the study of law, legal institutions, and social policy. Second, the study of antitrust prepares the student for the practice of antitrust law, which is a field of great intellectual and practical interest and excitement; it may involve one in government service, counselling, practice before an administrative agency, analytical discussions and negotiations with the Justice Department, and federal court litigation. Moreover, the practice of antitrust law provides the constant challenge of learning facts about the functioning of whole industries. Third, as we approach the centennial of the Sherman Antitrust Law, antitrust is at a cusp where different social forces meet; future developments will be interesting to observe, and perhaps even to shape. In this book of history, economics, politics, and law, we have steered an eclectic course. Our goal is to provide the student with sufficient background to understand the intellectual history, the evolution, and the state of the law of antitrust; to excite the student to question the path the law has taken and to consider the paths it might take. We also hope to give the student a simple introduction to economic thinking and to illuminate the process of choosing the assumptions that shape economic analysis, so that the emerging antitrust lawyer or scholar can ask the right questions and, as well, appreciate the policy choices that underlie competing styles of antitrust economics.
Publication Date
1989
Edition
1
Recommended Citation
Fox, Eleanor M. and Sullivan, Lawrence A., "Cases and Materials on Antitrust" (1989). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 250.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/250
