Legal History Commons^™

The Evolving Populisms Of Antitrust, Sandeep Vaheesan

Sandeep Vaheesan

Scholars often divide the eras of U.S. antitrust law into those of “populism” and “economics” and posit a fundamental conflict between the two concepts. Generally, the decisions of the current antitrust era are described as economic, and the mid-twentieth century period is labeled as populist. A review of Supreme Court decisions on antitrust reveals a more complex picture. From the enactment of the Sherman Act in 1890, the Court’s antitrust rulings have spoken of populist goals and aimed to advance these objectives through economically informed rules. Populism versus economics is thus a false dichotomy.

The populism and economics of antitrust …

American Gangsters: Rico, Criminal Syndicates, And Conspiracy Law As Market Control, Benjamin Levin

Publications

In an effort to reexamine legal and political decisions about criminalization and the role of the criminal law in shaping American markets and social institutions, this Article explores the ways in which criminal conspiracy laws in the United States have historically been used to subdue nonstate actors and informal markets that threatened the hegemony of the state and formal market. To this end, the Article focuses primarily on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as illustrative of broader trends in twentieth-century criminal policy. Enacted in 1970, RICO provides criminal sanctions for individuals engaged in unacceptable organized activities and …