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Black And White Thinking In The Gray Areas Of Antitrust: The Dismantling Of Vertical Restraints Regulation, Barbara Ann White

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article I present a two-pronged analysis of vertical restraints, one in law and one in economics. By tracing the checkered legal history of vertical restraints, I show the marked changes recent antitrust decisions have wrought, in particular, by comparing the legal standards expressed by the Supreme Court in Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp. with those in Business Electronics Corp. v. Sharp Electronics Corp and Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO) v. USA Petroleum Co. If through the latter two cases the Court has, for all practical purposes, created a category of per se legality for vertical price restraints, which …