Goals of Antitrust: A Dialogue on Policy

Abstract

In 1890, Senator John Sherman described the act which now bears his name as a "bill of rights, a charter of liberty." Today, although a broad consensus has developed in favor of at least some regulation, a debate continues over the purposes of antitrust legislation and over the implementation of antitrust policy. Concern about the direction of antitrust doctrine has been aroused by recent decisions in the Supreme Court on mergers, Robinson-Patman violations and business torts. Professors Bork and Bowman of the Yale Law School fear that the Sherman and Clayton Acts are being enforced in a way that is "anticompetitive," and are particularly critical of decisions dealing with mergers and vertical integration; Columbia Professors Blake and Jones reject the economic postulates of "these new critics of antitrust," and argue substantially in favor of existing trends. Because of the fundamental importance of the issues involved, the Editors of the COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW have invited these eminent scholars to continue a dialogue, initiated in FORTUNE magazine, on the purposes of our antitrust policy and the methods by which these purposes may be achieved.