Legal History Commons^™

O Sherman Act E A Eponimia Das Leis, Victor J. Calvete

Victor J. Calvete

In the first session of the 51th Congress of the United States, two statutes were approved named after Senator John Sherman: the Sherman Silver Act and the Sherman Anti-trust Act. In his Mémoirs the Senator admits (and regrets) the eponimy in the first case, but does not aknowledge the second. It might have been a surprise to him to know that the Judiciary's Committee version that superseeded the Finance Committee's one - the one that he introduced in December 1889 as S. 1 - came to be graced with his name. The point is that trying to illuminate the 1890 …

Antitrust Energy, D. Daniel Sokol, Barak Orbach

D. Daniel Sokol

Marking the centennial anniversary of Standard Oil Co. v. United States, we argue that much of the critique of antitrust enforcement and the skepticism about its social significance suffer from “Nirvana fallacy” — comparing existing and feasible policies to ideal normative policies, and concluding that the existing and feasible ones are inherently inefficient because of their imperfections. Antitrust law and policy have always been and will always be imperfect. However, they are alive and kicking. The antitrust discipline is vibrant, evolving, and global. This essay introduces a number of important innovations in scholarship related to Standard Oil and its modern …

Overcoming Impediments To Information Sharing, Avishalom Tor, Amitai Aviram

Avishalom Tor

When deciding whether to share information, firms consider their private welfare. Discrepancies between social and private welfare may lead firms excessively to share information to anti-competitive ends - in facilitating of cartels and other harmful horizontal practices - a problem both antitrust scholarship and case law have paid much attention to. On the other hand, legal scholars have paid far less attention to the opposite type of inefficiency in information sharing among competitors - namely, the problem of sub-optimal information sharing. This phenomenon can generate significant social costs and is of special importance in network industries because the maintenance of …

U.S. Antitrust: From Shot In The Dark To Global Leadership, David J. Gerber

David J. Gerber

When the US Congress in 1890 enacted the first US antitrust statute in 1890, it was taking a "shot in the dark." There were no models, and there was no experience with this type of law. Today, such laws have been enacted in over 110 countries, and US antitrust law is at the center of a globe-encircling web of competition laws and institutions. In this brief article written as part of a celebration of the history of Chicago-Kent Law School, I review the evolution of US antitrust law from "shot in the dark" to global competition law leadership.

Who Exempted Baseball, Anyway?: The Curious Development Of The Antitrust Exemption That Never Was, Mitchell J. Nathanson

Mitchell J Nathanson

This article takes a fresh look at baseball’s alleged antitrust exemption and explains why, after all, the exemption is alleged rather than actual. For contrary to popular opinion, this article concludes that the Supreme Court’s 1922 Federal Baseball Club decision did not exempt Organized Baseball from federal antitrust laws. Instead, the opinion was much more limited in scope and never reached the question of whether Organized Baseball should be treated differently than other, similarly situated businesses or institutions, although Organized Baseball clearly invited the Justices to make this determination in its brief to the Court. As this article discusses, the …

Normative Dynamics Of Competition Laws, Piyabutr Bunaramrueang

piyabutr bunaramrueang

This article aims at providing a review on normative dynamics of competition laws. Although legal norms seem to be very stable, those norms governing economic activities are changing relatively fast. It is therefore an attempt to illustrate dynamic quality of laws by using competition laws as a major example of laws governing economic activities. I would like to discuss mainly over U.S. antitrust laws as the major model of competition laws, perhaps, for all other countries pursuing economic growth of free market. The dynamic quality of U.S. antitrust laws is essentially derived from its legal tradition that invites legal reasoning …

Competition Law And The Economy In The Russian Federation, 1990-2006, Reza Rajabiun

Reza Rajabiun

Guilds, Laws, And Markets For Manufactured Merchandise In Late-Medieval England, Gary Richardson

Gary Richardson

The prevailing paradigm of medieval manufacturing presumes guilds monopolized markets for durable goods in late-medieval England. The sources of the monopolies are said to have been the charters of towns, charters of guilds, parliamentary statutes, and judicial precedents. This essay examines those sources, demonstrates they did not give guilds legal monopolies in the modern sense of the word, and replaces that erroneous assumption with an accurate description of the legal institutions underlying markets for manufactures in medieval England.

Clueless: The Misuse Of Batf Firearms Tracing Data, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

Sometimes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms traces the registered sales history of a gun which was used in a crime, or which has been seized by the police. Traced guns are not representative of the broader universe of crime guns. Accordingly, drawing public policy conclusions based on tracing data is unwise.