HIPSTERS DEMAND LAW AND ORDER! John Newman on Whether Law or Economics Comes First in Antitrust

So I, as I said, want to talk to you about this piece, "Lawless Antitrust," which I loved.

But for our audience, I wanna kinda situate this in the broader questions that are going on in antitrust first.

Um- So we talked about Bork's ideas in the last episode, what they were reacting to, we talked about his book, and then we said this was a wildly successful revolution.

But how exactly did the law change, like the mechanics of it?

So I re- when I talk about this intellectual revolution, I always start with, uh, the Powell Memo.

I start with Justice Powell before becoming a justice, laying out a, a political ideological project and the means to accomplish it.

Can you s- fill us in a little bit on the context for the Powell Memo?

Yes.

When did he write that, and for what reason?

So the Powell Memo is, I mean, some people point to it as kind of like the, the, um, holy scripture for the neoliberal revolution.

It's a memo that J- that before he was a Supreme Court justice, uh, pre Justice Powell wrote on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, and it got pretty widely circulated among business types.

Basically, his argument was, "Hey, all these labor groups and, and consumer protection advocacy organizations and environmental advocacy organizations, et cetera, they've all been organizing, and they're having a lot of success changing our law and changing our society.

We, for-profit corporations, need to do the same thing.

We need to get organized, and we need to start changing the law." And he laid out a bunch of really discrete, "Here are things we can specifically do to change the law to favor our interests," for-profit corporate interests.

And so then when he's on the court, he writes the first Chicago school opinion.

He writes the GTE Sylvania opinion.

And in his notes, it wasn't like he said, "Oh, I've read the works, and they've persuaded me." He was basically casting around for some ex post justification, found Chicago school ideas laying around, picked them up and used them.

Yeah, and one of them, one of those Chicago ideas is right here.

I'm holding up the-

Yeah

...

Antitrust Paradox with a author, author photo, one of the best author photos, I think, that there is.

Ooh.

Is that the old edition? That's the classic.

This is a first edition.

So I, as I said, want to talk to you about this piece, "Lawless Antitrust," which I loved.

But for our audience, I wanna kinda situate this in the broader questions that are going on in antitrust first.

Um- So we talked about Bork's ideas in the last episode, what they were reacting to, we talked about his book, and then we said this was a wildly successful revolution.

But how exactly did the law change, like the mechanics of it?

So I re- when I talk about this intellectual revolution, I always start with, uh, the Powell Memo.

I start with Justice Powell before becoming a justice, laying out a, a political ideological project and the means to accomplish it.

Can you s- fill us in a little bit on the context for the Powell Memo?

Yes.

When did he write that, and for what reason?

So the Powell Memo is, I mean, some people point to it as kind of like the, the, um, holy scripture for the neoliberal revolution.

It's a memo that J- that before he was a Supreme Court justice, uh, pre Justice Powell wrote on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, and it got pretty widely circulated among business types.

Basically, his argument was, "Hey, all these labor groups and, and consumer protection advocacy organizations and environmental advocacy organizations, et cetera, they've all been organizing, and they're having a lot of success changing our law and changing our society.

We, for-profit corporations, need to do the same thing.

We need to get organized, and we need to start changing the law." And he laid out a bunch of really discrete, "Here are things we can specifically do to change the law to favor our interests," for-profit corporate interests.

And so then when he's on the court, he writes the first Chicago school opinion.

He writes the GTE Sylvania opinion.

And in his notes, it wasn't like he said, "Oh, I've read the works, and they've persuaded me." He was basically casting around for some ex post justification, found Chicago school ideas laying around, picked them up and used them.

Yeah, and one of them, one of those Chicago ideas is right here.

I'm holding up the-

Yeah

...

Antitrust Paradox with a author, author photo, one of the best author photos, I think, that there is.

Ooh.

Is that the old edition? That's the classic.

This is a first edition.