Law Commons^™

A Traditional And Textualist Analysis Of The Goals Of Antitrust: Efficiency, Preventing Theft From Consumers, And Consumer Choice, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article ascertains the overall purpose of the antitrust statutes in two very different ways. First, it performs a traditional analysis of the legislative history of the antitrust laws by analyzing relevant legislative debates and committee reports. Second, it undertakes a textualist or "plain meaning" analysis of the purpose of the antitrust statutes, using Justice Scalia's methodology. It does this by analyzing the meaning of key terms as they were used in contemporary dictionaries, legal treatises, common law cases, and the earliest U.s. antitrust cases, and it does this in light of the history of the relevant times.

Both approaches …

The Reconceptualization Of Legislative History In The Supreme Court, Charles Tiefer

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1995, the Supreme Court began to embrace a approach to interpreting Congressional intent. From that year forward, the Breyers-Stevens model of legislative history, or "institutional legislative history," has seen significant success, emerging in the shadows of the success Justice Scalia's enjoyed while promoting his brand of textualism in the early 1990s. In developing a new way to view Congressional intent, Justices Breyers and Stevens synthesize information gathered from congressional report details, preferably attached to bill drafting choices, thereby renouncing Scalia's reliance on the purposes espoused by the Congressional majority. This new approach, the author contends, rejuvenated the court's approach …