Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-2014
Abstract
Of all Robert Bork’s many important contributions to antitrust law, none was more significant than his identification of economic efficiency, disguised as consumer welfare, as the sole normative objective of U.S. antitrust law. The Supreme Court relied primarily on Bork’s argument that Congress intended the Sherman Act to advance consumer welfare in making its landmark statement in Reiter v. Sonotone that “Congress designed the Sherman Act as a ‘consumer welfare prescription.’” This singular normative vision proved foundational to the reorientation of antitrust law away from an interventionist, populist, Brandeisian, and vaguely Jeffersonian conception of antitrust law as a constraint on large-scale business power and toward a conception of antitrust law as a mild constraint on a relatively small set of practices that pose a threat to allocative efficiency.
Recommended Citation
Crane, Daniel A. "The Tempting of Antitrust: Robert Bork and the Goals of Antitrust Policy." Antitrust L. J. 79, no. 3 (2014): 835-53.
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Comments
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