I gather we've established that this group--as a key part of
America's organized bar--is not interested in the subject of justice, i.e.,
in whether (and how) our alleged 'enforcement' agencies (and our judiciary)
have made it virtually impossible to win an antitrust case in the country's
courts and thus have systematically trashed the idea of a JUST antimonopoly
policy in America.
My recent post on the judicial repeal of the 7th amendment in
antitrust--the ancient guarantee of trial by jury--was met with a deafening
silence from the lawyers here on the merits and a vigorous thumping of the
ad hominem table, both classical signs of the lawyer who's embarassingly
short of provable facts and defensible law. Amend that misleading
inscription to read: '[Un]Equal Justice Under [Unjust] Law."
So what do we have left to talk about, after we've put aside (1) our
pro- monopoly and scandalously unjust body of SUBSTANTIVE antitrust law and
(2) the kangaroo-court PROCEDURES (e.g., summary judgment, no jury trial)
that our 1,000 judges eagerly (and shamefully) adopted post-1975 to get
those unjust substantive results?
Ah yes, there IS a subject that I'm told interests this group
greatly: How to maximize counsel's PERSONAL antitrust income. Very well.
Let's talk about income maximization for America's antitrust bar, beginning
with a couple of background facts:
l. The number of antitrust cases filed in U.S. courts reached a
peak of some 1,600 in 1976. The last time I checked, several years ago,
that number was down to roughly 400.
2. At that mid-'70s peak of antitrust enforcement in the U.S., the
Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association (composed overwhelmingly
of defense lawyers) had, as I recall, well over 25,000 members. Today, I
understand that number is some 5,000 or less. (Without the merger
'reporting' requirements of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act--the
'Full-Employment-of-the-Antitrust-Bar-Act' with its massive paperwork
mandate as a condition for Justice/FTC approval of mergers-to- monopoly--the
unemployment rate among U.S. antitrust lawyers would clearly be among the
nation's highest.)
Does this decline of the cases from 1,600 to 400--and of
professional monopoly defenders from 25,000 to 5,000--suggest that killing
antitrust is a sensible way to maximize personal income for the latter? If
America's organized antitrust bar is made up of rational income-maximizers,
are they even acting in their own self- interest when they urge less rather
than more enforcement, weaker rather than stronger antimonopoly laws? Or
are they acting irrationally, i.e., publicly catering to the ideologies (and
narrow interests) of their corporate clients at the expense of their own
(not to mention the welfare of their country and its 270 million citizens)
incomes?
Defending unjust laws--in what can only be called a kangaroo-court
framework that's rooted in the seduction of our 1,000 federal judges via
Henry Manne's ex parte propaganda AND denies the ancient Anglo-Saxon right
of trial by jury--that are continuously shrinking their own incomes?
Doesn't really sound too smart.
Not persuaded? Consider this scenario. In the next presidential
election (year 2,000), there's a Republican sweep. They retain their
control of both houses of Congress. Plus they gain the White House (e.g.,
Bush Jr.). No more presidential vetoes, requiring a 2/3rds vote of Congress
to overturn them. Gingrich, Armey, et al pass a law that REPEALS the whole
of U.S. antimonopoly policy, the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of
1914, and all the rest. No democratic president to veto it. A 51% vote in
a Republican Congress makes it the law of the land.
So, no more U.S. antitrust laws. Would such a snuffing out of
America's antimonopoly laws be in the self-interest of the lawyer-members of
the ABA's Antitrust Section? Would it maximize their personal incomes?
This will no doubt be a more congenial subject than my last one--the
rigged rules that let monopoly's defenders 'win' against antitrust
plaintiffs who, like the proverbial fish in the barrels, have no fair chance
to defend themselves against the 'sportsmen' with their cowardly shotguns.
Charles Mueller, Editor
ANTITRUST LAW & ECONOMICS REVIEW
http://webpages.metrolink.net/~cmueller
