University of Baltimore Law ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law All Faculty Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 4-2013 A Traditional and Textualist Analysis of the Goals of Antitrust: Efficiency, Preventing Theft from Consumers, and Consumer Choice Robert H. Lande University of Baltimore School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac Part of the Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons, Consumer Protection Law Commons, Legislation Commons, and the Social Welfare Law Commons Recommended Citation A Traditional and Textualist Analysis of the Goals of Antitrust: Efficiency, Preventing Theft from Consumers, and Consumer Choice, 81 Fordham L. Rev. 2349 (2013) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. A TRADITIONAL AND TEXTUALIST ANALYSIS OF THE GOALS OF ANTITRUST: EFFICIENCY, PREVENTING THEFT FROM CONSUMERS, AND CONSUMER CHOICE Robert H. Lande * This Article ascertains the overall purpose of the antitrust statutes in two very different ways. First, it performs a traditional analysis of the legislative history of the antitrust laws by analyzing relevant legislative debates and committee reports. Second, it undertakes a textualist or "plain meaning" analysis of the purpose of the antitrust statutes, using Justice Scalia's methodology. It does this by analyzing the meaning ofkey terms as they were used in contemporary dictionaries, legal treatises, common law cases, and the earliest U.s.