Jeffrey Rosen: How The Obama Administration’s Suit Against Book Publishers Proves The Bankruptcy Of Our Antitrust Laws | The New Republic

Excerpt from a timely anti-trust reality check

"How did the Justice Department end up going after the wrong monopoly? Current anti-trust law constrains monopolies only when they engage in predatory pricing by selling items under cost to crush their competitors. (Amazon’s pricing arguably isn’t predatory because its using e-books as a “loss leader” to drive sales of the Kindle). Conservative judges have also been eager to interpret antitrust law narrowly. Since the 1990s, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of antitrust law has been remarkably tilted toward business defendants. Although courts once held that monopolies were bad with occasional exceptions, the Supreme Court is increasingly holding the monopolies are good unless they engage in predatory pricing. So skewed is the status quo in favor of monopolies that antitrust defendants have won 15 out of the past 16 cases before the Supreme Court. "

Jeffrey Rosen: How The Obama Administration’s Suit Against Book Publishers Proves The Bankruptcy Of Our Antitrust Laws | The New Republic