Law Commons^™

Trade Association, State Building, And The Sherman Act: The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, 1912-25, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (USCC), and "organization of organizations," was conceived in 1912 in coordination with administrators at the Department of Commerce and Labor to promote the collection of commercially valuable trade information. A critical though often neglected, aspect of administrative state building has been the information-gathering and dissemination practices spearheaded by the Department of Commerce and later the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in conjunction with the USCC. Rather than a strictly adversarial relationship, in the early twentieth century business-government relations created mutually constitutive administrative capacities in both private trade associations and public administrative agencies.

When First Amendment Values And Competition Policy Collide: Resolving The Dilemma Of Mixed-Motive Boycotts, Kay P. Kindred

Scholarly Works

In a representative democracy, government must protect the rights of its citizens to express ideas, to voice grievances, and to seek to influence government. The first Amendment safeguards these fundamental political rights from government intrusion. In a free market economy, government must protect trade and commerce from activities and influences that lead to increased concentrations of economic power or that otherwise tend to restrain competition. The antitrust laws, specifically the Sherman Act, seek to safeguard the competitive process from restrictive trade practices. Conflict arises when efforts to influence government threaten to undermine competition.

Nowhere is the clash between First Amendment …

Judicial Activism, Economic Theory And The Role Of Summary Judgment In Sherman Act Conspiracy Cases: The Illogic Of Matsushita, James F. Ponsoldt, Marc J. Lewyn

Scholarly Works

The proper role of neoclassical economic theory in the resolution of antitrust disputes will continue to be debated into the next administration. The Reagan Administration has succeeded in persuading the Supreme Court to incorporate laissez-faire assumptions and goals into Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts jurisprudence in at least three major decisions, although the long-range importance of the holdings in two of those cases remains somewhat in doubt.

One of those decisions, however, reflects more than just a disagreement about application is of the antitrust laws. In Matsushita, the Court, ordering summary judgment for defendants at the urging of the Justice …

The Expansion Of Horizontal Merger Defenses After General Dynamics: A Suggested Reconsideration Of Sherman Act Principles, James F. Ponsoldt

Scholarly Works

Logic suggests that if an agreement between two direct competitors to end a price war, allocate customers or refuse to deal with a third party is plainly anticompetitive and forbidden under applicable federal antitrust laws, then a complete integration between those same two direct competitors is equally anticompetitive and similarly should be forbidden. At one point, Congress thought so and the Supreme Court so held, notwithstanding the obvious business advantages enjoyed by the integrated company. In recent years, however, Congress, the Supreme Court and many commentators have changed their view of horizontal integration, and it is now reasonably possible for …