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9 Antitrust Bull. 587 (1964)
The Crisis in Antitrust

handle is hein.journals/antibull9 and id is 607 raw text is: THE CRISIS IN ANTITRUST* by ROBERT H. BORK and WARD S. BOWMAN JR.** Long-standing contradictions at the root of antitrust doc- trine have today brought it to a crisis of policy. From its inception with the passage of the Sherman Act in 1890, anti- trust has vacillated between the policy of preserving com- petition and the policy of preserving competitors from their more energetic and efficient rivals. It is the rapid acceleration of the latter protectionist trends in antitrust that has brought on the present crisis. Antifree-market forces now have the upper hand and are steadily broadening and con- solidating their victory. The continued acceptance and ex- pansion of their doctrine, which now constitutes antitrust's growing edge, threaten within the foreseeable future to de- stroy the antitrust laws as guarantors of a competitive economy. The situation would be sufficiently serious if antitrust were merely a set of economic prescriptions applicable to a sector of the economy, but it is much more than that; it is also an expression of a social philosophy, an educative force, and a political symbol of extraordinary potency. Its capture by the opponents of the free market is thus likely to have effects far beyond the confines of antitrust itself. The very existence of this crisis-and the basic societal changes it portends-seems unsuspected by most Americans. Reprinted with permission from Fortune Magazine, December, 1963. ** The authors of this article are both on the faculty of Yale Law School, Ward S. Bowman Jr. as a professor of law and economics, Robert H. Bork as an associate professor of law. Bowman was with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice during most of the years from 1938 to 1946. Bork formerly practiced law, pri- marily in the field of antitrust, with the Chicago firm of Kirkland, Ellis, Hodson, Chaffetz & Masters. 587

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