Bork offered a calming remedy, with an appealing simplicity and apparent rigor. For Bork’s antitrust economics are easy—not easy enough for a schoolchild, but easy enough for a lawyer who does not specialize in antitrust and is looking for a dignified and respectable manner in which to decide, or get rid of, a hard case. The simple question that Bork posed for every doctrine was this: Does it clearly prevent harm to consumers? Have you proven it? Or might there, plausibly, be an economic explanation that doesn’t imply harm, and if so, what is it?
