Exactly one year after Bork’s book was published, a pivotal Supreme Court decision quoted its key “consumer welfare” sentence, and since then federal judges have quoted the line in antitrust decisions dozens of times. Just like that, economic efficiency as measured by prices became “the stated goal in antitrust” exclusively. “Antitrust was defined by Robert Bork,” says the University of Arizona law professor and antitrust specialist Barak Orbach. I cannot overstate his influence. Any antitrust person would tell you the same thing….The Court started thinking they should have an economic
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