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Conflicting Interpretations Of The Sherman Act's Jurisdictional Requirement, Robert D. Eckinger

Vanderbilt Law Review

Over the past fifty years, plaintiffs have called upon the federal judiciary to deal with antitrust disputes of an increasingly local nature. Although the courts have responded by generally broadening the range of activities which satisfy the substantive elements of the Sherman Act, their approach to the jurisdictional requirement of the statute has been far from consistent. As a matter of statutory construction, this inconsistency, when compared to the expansive jurisdictional approach applied to other statutes based on the commerce clause, is not justified, at least in the absence of a congressional intention to limit the reach of the Sherman …