The result is that the courts get to make something up about when they apply, and have made a bit of a mess of it.
Sure, it says, "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal." But that doesn't mean Sprint can't merge with T-Mobile. Or maybe it does. Anybody have a coin to flip?
What the DoJ can do is dump a bunch of allegations into an indictment and hope some of them sound plausible enough to induce a settlement. Which will ideally actually promote competition and not be some political quid pro quo.
Yes, it is. [0]
> it’s the federal prosecutor’s office.
That is among its functions, yes.
> The antitrust laws we have are quite old and passed during the era of robber barons in order to do something about them, with extremely broad language that by its terms would prohibit not only anything you might like them to but a lot of things you might not.
Among the antitrust laws we have are:
* the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Reform and Enhancement Permanent Extension Act (2020); whose main effect was, as the names suggests, to make permanent the provisions of the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Reform and Enhancement Act (2004).
* the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act (2020)
* the antitrust provisions of the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2020 (oddly enough, 2021)
Some of our antitrust laws were written in the so-called “age of robber barons”, but antitrust law (even purely statute law) hasn’t been static since.
[0] for illustration, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-advances-p... ; you probably mean, though, that its not the rulemaking entity with regard to competition, since that’s mostly the FTC.
I actually wasn't aware that they issued rules at all and now that I know that they do I kind of wish they would stop.
Sometimes we separate government functions for a reason.
> Some of our antitrust laws were written in the so-called “age of robber barons”, but antitrust law (even purely statute law) hasn’t been static since.
It's not that Congress hasn't passed a law since then, but I believe they're being accused of violating[0] the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
All three of the “core” anti-trust laws (the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the FTC Act of 1914) have been amended several times since by later acts. They aren't ancient relics that haven't been reconsidered and adjusted based on experience and changing conditions.
Being "quite old and passed during the era of robber barons" is not quite the killing argument you think it is. The 13th Amendment is even older. So is Marbury vs. Madison.
If the rules were actually that simple, the world would need far fewer lawyers.
But - whether you say "rules that simple can't work when the world is vastly more complex", or "rules-writing lawyers aren't stupid enough to write their own kind out of their jobs" - the rules are definitely not that simple.
I'd argue that's the main reason for not making a law though, if it's too complicated for the average person to read and understand where the line is drawn then we shouldn't draw it.
I feel harmed every day being coerced to be an unwilling and unhappy product of Google's adtech leviathan. I don't know what that means for this particular case, but hopefully Google gets the message and builds a better off-ramp.
You are harmed. The question now is how to obtain remedy for that objective harm and injunction against further actual harms.
