For AT&T, though, there was a chilling aspect of Greene’s brand of judicial activism. It came in the form of a question that lingered on the lips of the company’s attorneys in 1979, as Greene pushed relentlessly to bring U.S. v. AT&T to trial. To make his point, to prove that the federal courts could effectively manage a major antitrust case, wouldn’t Greene be more inclined to rule in the government’s favor and break up AT&T? If he pushed the case to trial, and then agreed with the phone company that Justice’s allegations were baseless, wouldn’t his “example” be undermined?
