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TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION 693 II. AN OVERVIEW OF ANTITRUST ECONOMICS, THEORY, AND DOCTRINE 699 A. Antitrust Economics 701 1. Supply, Demand, Competition, and Monopoly 701 2. Utility and [...], The rise of large, market-concentrating technology firms like Amazon, Inc. is driving commentators, regulators, and politicians to rethink the law of antitrust. In particular, "New Antitrust" reformers propose that the narrow focus on consumer welfare has caused antitrust law to stop too short in corralling the broader social and economic consequences of Big Tech's "bigness." Proponents of the consumer welfare standard argue that it has worked well to distinguish beneficial competition from harmful aggression and, further, to reduce costly legal uncertainty. There is now momentum for substantial reform to antitrust law and practice and a growing debate about what such reform might include. This Article contributes to the debate by presenting a modest case study of a market that is evolving on Amazon, Inc.'s Marketplace platform: the market for nonprescription components of continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) machines, medical devices prescribed to patients suffering from sleep apnea. The study reveals two observations. First, the underlying economic and doctrinal logic of consumer welfare antitrust remains sound. Second, the study illustrates positive social consequences beyond just the economic wealth and welfare that the consumer welfare standard uses as its lodestar. This Article focuses on the second observation because New Antitrust reformers' core claim is that proponents of the consumer welfare approach are wrong to dismiss indirect negative social and economic consequences of bigness, such as harm to small business, stifling of innovation, and inequality. This Article follows the New Antitrust reformers into this space by illustrating counterbalancing social and economic consequences from Amazon's consolidation, including a thriving network of small and innovative dealers, other small innovators that serve them, increased employment opportunities, and even lowering of healthcare costs. Amazon has grown large and has concentrated online retail and related logistics, but its largeness has spurred innovation, competition, and social value-creation just upstream.

I. Introduction II. U.S. Antitrust Policy's Broad, Multi-Goal Tradition A. Antitrust in the Late Nineteenth Century 1. Antitrust Goals in the Sherman Act Legislative History 2. Early Antitrust Cases Support [...], Two recent papers by prominent antitrust scholars argue that a revived antitrust movement can help reverse the dramatic rise in economic inequality and the erosion of political democracy in the United States. Both papers rely on the legislative history of the key antitrust statutes to support their case. Not surprisingly, their recommendations have been met with alarm in some quarters, and with skepticism in others. Such proposals by antitrust reformers are often contrasted with the Consumer Welfare Standard that pervades antitrust policy today. The Consumer Welfare Standard suffers from several defects: (1) it employs a narrow, unworkable measure of welfare; (2) it excludes important sources of welfare based on the assumption that antitrust seeks only to maximize wealth; (3) it assumes a constant and equal individual marginal utility of money; and (4) it is often combined with extraneous ideological goals. Even with these defects, however, if applied consistent with its theoretical underpinnings, the consideration of the transfer of labor rents resulting from a merger or dominant firm conduct is supported by the Consumer Welfare Standard. Moreover, even when only consumers (and not producers) are deemed relevant, the welfare of labor still should consistently be considered part of consumer welfare. In contrast, fostering political democracy--a prominent traditional antitrust goal that was jettisoned by the Chicago School--falls outside the Consumer Welfare Standard in any of its constructs. To undergird such important broader goals requires that the Consumer Welfare Standard be replaced with the General Welfare Standard. The General Welfare Standard consists of modern welfare economics modified to accommodate objective analyses of human welfare and purged of inconsistencies.

The year 2007 heralded a major advance in China's entry to the global economy's rules-based marketplace. Its Anti-Monopoly Law 2007 (AML 2007) taking inspiration from European Union (EU) antitrust concepts contained internationally familiar key antitrust prohibitions. It appeared to satisfy key benchmarks, which any credible antitrust enforcement system should exhibit, namely Legitimacy and Effectiveness. However, in this original contribution, analysing 14 years of leading case law, the authors identify several key persistent Legitimacy and Effectiveness issues which arise when private parties attempt antitrust enforcement through the courts. On key issues such as: (i) Compensation awards inadequacy; (ii) Lack of rights for indirect purchasers; (iii) Absence of a passing-on defence; and (iv) Limitations of collective litigation mechanisms, deficiencies arising in each of these four areas are identified and analysed. Pathways to reform are set out. Comparative analysis with the corresponding EU and US jurisprudence is undertaken throughout, to illuminate the contrast in treatment for antitrust litigants facing similar antitrust situations. Recently enacted reform legislation (AML 2022) does not remedy the antitrust protection concerns identified by the authors. Private parties seeking antitrust redress in China will therefore continue to have weaker remedies in antitrust enforcement cases, in contrast with their EU and US counterparts. The absence of comprehensive reform means that Legitimacy and Effectiveness deficiencies will continue to undermine legal protection for China's private antitrust enforcement litigants. Furthermore, the research demonstrates how norm adoption on its own cannot raise the propect of better outcomes, unless accompanied by corresponding evolution in the provision of more robust enforcement rights and remedies for antitrust litigants, as well as evolution in judicial interpretation to support antitrust norms acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to provide a short overview of the 2023 US Draft Merger Guidelines and some interpretations of its impact on merger control practices. The US practice shows that merger control standards have been changed several times, in accordance with the need to increasingly consider economic efficiencies and the consequences of making wrong decisions, which could reduce innovation and other behaviours of undertakings that lead to an increase in economic efficiency and improve competition. Due to the fact that guidelines can influence how judges evaluate challenges to mergers, it remains to be seen how the final guidelines will enable the courts to understand and support the agencies' views on antitrust enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition in the agricultural marketplace has significantly declined as a result of decreasing antitrust enforcement and increasing consolidation. In the current market, the largest firms control disproportionate percentages of market power, threatening consumer prices, principles of equal economic opportunity, and viability of small firms. Agriculture contributes to 10.5 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions. The necessary reduction of emissions is hindered by dominating large farms’ tendency to employ practices that increase emissions, contrary to small farms. Agriculture consolidation has increased due to non-precautionary approaches by the Supreme Court and federal regulation agencies. Specifically, the Supreme Court’s ruling that the “threat of loss of profits due to possible price competition” does not constitute antitrust harm, has hindered the implementation of the Clayton Act. Additionally, the federal agencies responsible for regulating mergers have increased the number of mergers they approve. The lack of strict antitrust regulation to prevent mergers from holding undue percentages of the marketplace is hindering the growth of regenerative farming, a set of practices that will be integral in combating climate change.

Conclusion Current DOJ and FTC leadership claim the "core value"[42] of the agencies' antitrust agenda is the "rule of law".[43] FTC Chair Khan has characterized the FTC's antitrust philosophy as "fundamentally conservative" because it is 'deeply ground[ed] ... in statutory text, history, judicial precedent, and congressional intent'.[44] AAG Kanter has stressed antitrust enforcement has '... deviated too far from the will of Congress. 13 Press Release, FTC, 'Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department Seek to Strengthen Enforcement Against Illegal Mergers." At the FTC and DOJ's Enforcers Summit on 4 April 2022, AAG Kanter stated that the DOJ will "not hesitate to enforce the law" if it determines that a s 2 criminal charge is warranted. [Extracted from the article]

The aim of this article is to provide a short overview of the 2023 US Draft Merger Guidelines and some interpretations of its impact on merger control practices. The US practice shows that merger control standards have been changed several times, in accordance with the need to increasingly consider economic efficiencies and the consequences of making wrong decisions, which could reduce innovation and other behaviours of undertakings that lead to an increase in economic efficiency and improve competition. Due to the fact that guidelines can influence how judges evaluate challenges to mergers, it remains to be seen how the final guidelines will enable the courts to understand and support the agencies' views on antitrust enforcement.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1872 I. Antitrust's Focus on the Trees 1876 A. Standards of Proof 1876 B. Mergers and Future Harm 1879 C. Petitioning Agencies and Courts 1884 D. [...], Antitrust is atomistic: deliberately focused on trees, not forests. It pays attention to the consequences of individual acts alleged to be anticompetitive. That focus is misplaced. Companies and markets don't focus on one particular act to the exclusion of all else. Business strategy emphasizes holistic, integrated planning. And market outcomes aren't determined by a single act, but by the result of multiple acts by multiple parties in the overall context of the structure and characteristics of the market. The atomistic nature of modern antitrust law causes it to miss two important classes of potential competitive harms. First, the focus on individual acts, coupled with the preponderance of the evidence standard for proving a violation, means that antitrust can't effectively deal with what we might call probabilistic competitive harm: multiple acts, any one of which might or might not harm competition. Second, atomistic antitrust tends to miss synergistic competitive harm: acts which are lawful when taken individually but which combine together in an anticompetitive way. Unfortunately, modern antitrust law has strayed too far down the atomistic pathway. Courts and agencies too often take a narrow, transaction-specific focus to challenged conduct. Instead of asking "is the overall behavior of this company reducing competition in the market," they focus on a particular merger or challenged monopolistic practice in isolation. Courts and agencies need to move beyond atomistic antitrust and take a more holistic look at the circumstances and effects of an overall pattern of conduct. Our goal in this Article is to set out a framework for integrated antitrust, in which individual actions can be understood not just on their own but also as part of a comprehensive whole. Only by doing so can the legal system both return antitrust to its roots and bring antitrust into the modern context of the business decisions that courts must analyze today.

ABSTRACT The real property recording system is designed to protect purchasers and mortgagees against defects in title. Navigating that system is beyond the capacity of most laymen; historically, purchasers hired [...]

This study examines the operation of the New York, Chicago & St Louis Railroad Company, which is better known by the name, the Nickel Plate Road (NKP). The operations and financial reports from its inception through the period under study provide evidence that management adopted practices that contributed to a populist view of behaviour akin to the robber baron image. This added to social disruption, and the need for anti-trust regulation. Monopolistic tendencies of U.S. large-scale enterprises in the last decades of the nineteenth century motivated speculative investors to build the NKP for selling it to ensure anti-competitive aims of the acquirer. This article, based on the annual accounting reports, asserts that enabling such a structure guided NKP's activities. This demonstrates that laissez-faire business policy alone was failing to meet developing social constructs for an industrial society. Disclosure of accounting numbers became an expectation with the rise of the Interstate Commerce Commission and regulation demonstrating the public use of private interest. Regulating the socio-economic force of railroads and addressing the 'railroad problem' would require decades for government officials to effectively address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION 78 I. THE PROCEDURAL HISTORY OF APPLE V. PEPPER 82 A. IN RE. APPLE IPHONE ANTITRUST LITIGATION: THE LOWER COURTS 82 GRAPPLE WITH WHETHER IPHONE USERS HAVE STANDING B. [...]

I. INTRODUCTION When one bank seeks to merge with another, the bank must do so with the approval of a federal regulatory agency. (1) The Department of Justice ("DOJ") plays [...]

The article discusses the process of creating social legislation in the United States of America at the beginning of the 20th century. This legislation in the country was created later than in European countries. It was issued during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The process of reviewing these bills in the US Congress, as well as the political struggle associated with their development and adoption, the analysis of the documents themselves are the focus of this article.

INTRODUCTION Scholars and judges widely agree that the U.S. antitrust statutes are open-textured, vague, indeterminate, and textually unilluminating. (1) They further agree that little use can be made of the [...], Judges and scholars frequently describe antitrust as a common-law system predicated on open-textured statutes, but that description fails to capture a historically persistent phenomenon: judicial disregard of the plain meaning of the statutory texts and manifest purposes of Congress. This pattern of judicial nullification is not evenly distributed: when, the courts have deviated from the plain meaning or congressional purpose, they have uniformly done so to limit the reach of antitrust liability or curtail the labor exemption to the benefit of industrial interests. This phenomenon cannot be explained, solely or even primarily as a tug-of-war between a progressive Congress and conservative courts. The judges responsible for these decisions were jar from uniformly conservative, Congress has not mobilized to overturn the judicial precedents, nor, despite opportunities to do so, have the courts constitutionalized their holdings to prevent congressional overriding. Antitrust antitextualism is best understood as an implicit political arrangement in which Congress writes broad statutes expressing anti-bigness republican idealism, and then the courts read down the statutes pragmatically to accommodate competing demands for efficiency and industrial progress.