Digital Commons Network^™

Morality And Antitrust, Maurice Stucke

Scholarly Works

Although the Sherman Act was enacted over a century ago, antitrust enforcers, policy makers, and scholars have largely circumvented the morality of antitrust crimes. Its absence is remarkable given the vigorous debate over the appropriate civil and criminal penalties for antitrust violations. Under the continued influence of the Chicago-school's neoclassical economic theories, antitrust analysis is primarily concerned with economic efficiency. Since terms like morality and evil are judgmental, not descriptive, they are deemed outside the discourse of economic theory's self-described positivism. But antitrust analysis is not beyond the judgmental. Over the past thirty years, while antitrust's civil remedies have remained …