ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the bad history, bad policy, and bad law to exclude certain political values in interpreting the antitrust laws. By "political values", a fear that excessive concentration of economic power will breed antidemocratic political pressures, a desire to enhance individual and business freedom by reducing the range within which private discretion by a few in the economic sphere controls the welfare of all. The overriding political concern is that if the free-market sector of the economy is allowed to develop under antitrust rules that are blind to all but economic concerns, the likely result will be an economy. There are a number of non-economic concerns that can play no useful role in antitrust enforcement. The Sherman Act and most of its amendments do not address specific issues of antitrust enforcement. The chapter argues that the trend toward use of an exclusively economic approach to antitrust analysis excludes important political considerations that relevant by Congress and the courts.
