Antitrust Debate Summary

Professor White views antitrust from the prospective of “property rights and corrective justice.” Antitrust, says White, draws heavily from utilitarianism, the school of ethics that maintains that the right action to be taken is the one that produces the greatest amount of utility for the greatest number of people.” Professor White argues that this approach is misguided. Instead, individual and property rights should trump antitrust utilitarianism.

Professor White contends that antitrust ignores the right of people to control their property. White’s rights-based approach says that government exists to promote the rights of people to pursue their own interests. Government should only interfere with the pursuit of self-interest to protect

Antitrust violations that cause injury are torts which give rise liability to treble damages. In fact, many commentators regard antitrust violations as theft. Professor Robert Lande states;

“…the overriding purpose of the antitrust statutes is to prevent firms from stealing from consumers by charging them supracompetitive prices. When firms use their market power to raise prices to supracompetitive levels, consumers pay more for their goods and services, and these overcharges constitute a taking of consumers’ property.”

Writes Lande, “We could politely call this a concern with the wealth transfer effects of market power. Or we could bluntly, but accurately, characterize these as situations where the firms are stealing from consumers.” Congress agrees: violations of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act may constitute

However, in light of the wrongful harms that antitrust violations visit on consumers and other customers, the 125 years of federal antitrust legislation make clear that America will no longer permit businesses to be guided by pure self-interest. The antitrust laws are a narrowly focused way to deal with some of the challenges of the marketplace. They are far less intrusive than broad regulatory schemes or government appropriation of business. They recognize that businesses, their purchasers and consumers all have a place before the law. We should continue to embrace antitrust’s mission to make room at the table for