Abstract
US antitrust law prohibits anticompetitive restraints of trade, including collusion among firms and single-firm monopolization. The law serves as a democratic check against concentrations of private economic power. However, in the post-World War II era, the law has changed largely through case law, rather than through statutory interventions. Thus, understanding the role that antitrust law has played in reconciling capitalism and democracy requires us to ask what has influenced changes to antitrust law. This chapter traces antitrust law’s postwar development across three key periods: 1940–1970s, mid-1970s to 2010s, and 2010s to present. It argues that each era’s approach to the problem of market power has reflected not just economic theories, but also underlying beliefs about the relationship between economic and political power in a democratic society. Indeed, today’s debates over market power and competition policy remain central to ongoing efforts to reconcile democratic values with capitalist economic structures.
Repository Citation
Laura Phillips-Sawyer,
The Problem of Market Power in Postwar America: Antitrust Law, Regulatory Discourse, and Changing Ideas of Market Power
(2025),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/1754
Previously posted to Oxford Academic.