Certainty-driven per se rules threatened antitrust’s common law flexibility

Evidence

In a nutshell, Director and Levi argued that their understanding of economics did not justify the applications of the antitrust laws in the 1940s and 1950s. They disagreed with what they labeled “the drive for certainty and automaticity” on the part of the courts—particularly in the form of the incipiency doctrine that aimed to catch questionable anticompetitive conduct in its early stages. For Director and Levi, a dangerous implication of the drive for certainty and the reliance on numerous per se rules to help achieve greater certainty would result in the enfeeblement of the common law foundations of antitrust law, thereby precluding the antitrust laws from weathering future possible NRA attempts. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1138

Categorization

• XREF: Antitrust as common-law flexibility connects to Hayek’s critique of constructivist rationalism and spontaneous-order legal thinking. — connects to: Vertical integration was once treated as evidence of monopolization intent in antitrust law — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1105; Henry Simons favored Procrustean bright-line antitrust rules over judicial discretion — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1137; Rigid per se rules would prevent antitrust law from resisting future statist experiments — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1138 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Rigid per se rules would prevent antitrust law from resisting future statist experiments #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1138
• Common law adjudication cycles induction and deduction into new rules #corroborates (0.85) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 168
• Common law rules arise from comparing cases, not from tracing prior logic #expands (0.78) — Burton, Steven J, An Introduction to Law and Legal…, 222
• Antitrust law’s presumptions cannot be isolated from prevailing economic theory #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1146
• Congress deliberately delegated antitrust law creation to the courts via broad statutory language #corroborates (0.72) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 273
• The Rule of Law values predictability and uniformity over individual justice #complicates (0.70) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 61