The Antitrust Paradox - by Robert H Bork (Paperback)

About the Book

The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.

Book Synopsis

Since it first appeared in 1978, this seminal work by one of the foremost American legal minds of our age has dramatically changed the way the courts view government's role in private affairs. Now reissued with a new introduction and foreword, this classic shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses. Robert Bork's view of antitrust law has had a profound impact on how the law has been both interpreted and applied. Lucid, highly readable, and full of rich social and political implications, The Antitrust Paradox illustrates how the purpose and integrity of law can be subverted by those who do not understand the reality law addresses or who seek to make it serve unintended political and social ends.

Review Quotes

"I greatly appreciated my dear friend Bob Bork's The Antitrust Paradox. This seminal book and the ideas within have stood the test of time at the U.S. Supreme Court in case after case, and will continue to do so, because its qualities are the same as Bob's: fearless honesty, truthful observation, penetrating analysis, flashes of wit, and the humility of a genuine intellectual."

-The Honorable Edwin Meese, Counsellor to President Reagan and U.S. Attorney General

"The republication of The Antitrust Paradox couldn't have come at a more critical moment. Judge Bork's masterful explication of Chicago School economics for a legal audience was instrumental in bringing economic logic and rigor to antitrust law in the 1970s, ushering in a sea change in antitrust jurisprudence that has persisted for half a century. Today, many of the wrongheaded ideas that once dominated antitrust are back in the guise of "antitrust populism." Fortunately, this new edition of The Antitrust Paradox stands ready to vanquish them once more."

-Geoffrey A. Manne, President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics

"This classic work is still the most sustained and persuasive case that consumer welfare and modern economic science should serve as the exclusive guides to interpretation and application of the nation's antitrust statutes. Bork's lucid and tightly-reasoned arguments both transformed law and policy in the courts and set the terms for debates about the proper role of antitrust regulation in a free society. Though published more than two generations ago, the book's message is timeless in any society that values prosperity, economic freedom, and the rule of law. This new edition arrives at an apt time, as a bipartisan chorus seeks to replace consumer welfare and economic science with new approaches that could undermine antitrust's legitimacy and intellectual coherence, while simultaneously hampering efficient firms and reducing the nation's wealth."

-Alan J. Meese, Ball Professor of Law and Co-Director, Center for the Study of Law and Markets, William & Mary Law School

"The Antitrust Paradox is a great book in the sense of all great books: It is impossible to discuss first principles of the field without bringing the book into the conversation. Since 1978, many have taken Bork's prescriptions to heart, and many have vehemently disagreed with them, but no one seriously engaging with antitrust principles can ignore Bork's robust arguments for a Consumer Welfare Standard."

-Daniel A. Crane, Frederick Paul Furth Sr. Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

"It would be difficult to overstate what a significant, and beneficial, change this book inspired. The federal courts' embrace of its central ideas-that antitrust is a consumer welfare prescription and should focus on minimizing the sum of allocative and productive inefficiencies in markets-transformed U.S. antitrust law from a body of incoherent, often welfare-reducing precedents into an effective tool for raising living standards. Today, voices from both left and right are calling to refocus antitrust and imbue it with political content. Revisiting Bork's classic reminds us that these ideas for reform are not new. We tried them. They didn't work."

-Thomas A. Lambert, Wall Family Chair in Corporate Law and Governance, and Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law