Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Sherman Act Is A No-Fault Monopolization Statute: A Textualist Demonstration, Robert H. Lande, Richard O. Zerbe Jr.
The Sherman Act Is A No-Fault Monopolization Statute: A Textualist Demonstration, Robert H. Lande, Richard O. Zerbe Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
The drafters of the Sherman Act originally designed Section 2 to impose
sanctions on all monopolies and attempts to monopolize, regardless whether the
firm had engaged in anticompetitive conduct. This conclusion emerges from the
first ever textualist analysis of the language in the statute, a form of interpretation
originally performed only by Justice Scalia but now increasingly used by the
Supreme Court, including in its recent Bostock decision.
Following Scalia’s methodology, this Article analyzes contemporaneous
dictionaries, legal treatises, and cases and demonstrates that when the Sherman
Act was passed, the word “monopolize” simply meant that someone had acquired
a monopoly. …