Distributive Justice and the Antitrust Laws
![handle is hein.journals/gwlr51 and id is 15 raw text is: Distributive Justice and the
Antitrust Laws
Herbert Hovenkamp*
A quick survey of suggested goals of antitrust policy reveals a wide
variety of alternatives: the maximization of consumer welfare, eco-
nomic efficiency, the dispersion of economic and political power, the
unclogging of markets, the protection of easy entry into business, and
the protection of small businesses' welfare are just a few examples.
The view that the federal antitrust laws ought to promote allocative
efficiency in American business and markets has come to dominate
antitrust policy in the last decade.' Broadly speaking, antitrust juris-
prudents have been divided into two camps: those who think that the
efficient allocation of resources ought to be the overriding2 or exclu-
sive3 goal of antitrust policy, and those who would permit antitrust
policy to consider additional values unrelated to efficiency.4 No viable
Copyright © 1982 by Herbert Hovenkamp.
* Associate Professor of Law, Univ. of California, Hastings College of Law.
1. See 1 P. AREEDA & D. TuRNER, ANTrusT LAw 111-113 (1978); Posner, The
Chicago School of Antitrust Analysis, 127 U. PA. L. REV. 925, 933-34 (1979).
2. E.g., 1 P. AREEDA & D. TuRNF, supra note 1, 103-113. Over the years, Areeda,
Turner, and the Harvard school of antitrust analysis have come to rely more on eco-
nomic efficiency as the underlying rationale for antitrust policy, and have become in-
creasingly disparaging of any other goals. Id.; see Posner, supra note 1, at 934.
3. R. BoRx, THE ANITrRusT PARADoX A PoLIcY AT WAR WITH ITSELF 90-91 (1978);
R. POsNER, ANTrrRuST LAW: Ax ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE 4 (1976); Posner, Exclusionary
Practices and the Antitrust Laws, 41 U. CH. L. REV. 506, 506-07 (1974).
4. See, e.g., L. SULLIVAN, HANDBOOK OF THE LAW OF ANTITRUST §§ 3-5 (1977); Fox,
The Modernization of Antitrust: A New Equilibrium, 66 CORNELL L. REv. 1140, 1140
(1981); Schwartz, Justice and Other Non-Economic Goals of Antitrust 127 U. PA. L.
REv. 1076, 1076 (1979) [hereinafter cited as Schwartz, Justice ]; Schwartz, On the Uses of
Economics: A Review of Antitrust Treatises (Book Review), 128 U. PA. L. REv. 244,246-
47 (1979) [hereinafter cited as Schwartz, Book Review]; Sullivan, Book Review, 75
COLTrM. L. REV. 1214, 1219-23 (1975); Symposium on Antitrust Law and Economics, 127
November 1982 Vol. 51 No. 1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/gwlr51&div=9&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Distributive Justice and the Antitrust Laws
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