All I Really Need to Know About Antitrust I Learned in 1912

• Author: Daniel A. Crane
• Position: Associate Dean for Faculty and Research and Frederick Paul Furth, Sr. Professor of Law, University of Michigan
• Pages: 2025-2038

2025

All I Really Need to Know About Antitrust

I Learned in 1912

Daniel A. Crane

I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 2025

II. 1912: A BRIEF RETROSPECTIVE............................................................ 2026

III. THE CANDIDATES ON THE BIG QUESTIONS OF COMPETITION

POLICY ................................................................................................. 2028

A. COMPETITIVE OR MANAGED ECONOMY? .......................................... 2028

B. HOW IMPORTANT IS ANTITRUST TO A COMPETITIVE ECONOMY?...... 2032

C. WHAT INSTITUTIONS? .................................................................... 2035

IV. THE SHADOWS OF 1912 ....................................................................... 2036

V. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 2038

I. INTRODUCTION

Herbert Hovenkamp has indisputably earned the deanship of

contemporary antitrust scholarship. One could point to many different

attributes by which he has earned his laurels: fantastic scholarly productivity;

clarity and precision in the craft of writing; analytical depth in both law and

economics; moderation in a field apt to polarization; and custodianship of

the influential Areeda treatise.1 In this Essay, I hope to honor another

quality that has contributed significantly to Herb’s tremendous success as an

antitrust scholar—his engagement with history.

Much contemporary antitrust scholarship bursts with excitement at the

discovery of new phenomena or theories that in all actuality have long shelf

 Associate Dean for Faculty and Research and Frederick Paul Furth, Sr. Professor of

Law, University of Michigan. This Essay was written for a festschrift honoring Herbert

Hovenkamp.

1. See Rebecca Haw Allensworth, The Influence of the Areeda–Hovenkamp Treatis e in the Lower

Courts and What It Means for Institutional Reform in Antitrust, 100 IOWA L. REV. 1919 (2015);

Hillary Greene & D. Daniel Sokol, Judicial Treatment of the Antitrust Treatise, 100 IOWA L. REV.

2039 (2015).