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Fox, Eleanor M. --- "Post-Chicago, Post-Seattle and the Dilemma of Globalization" [2002] ELECD 90; in Cucinotta, Antonio; Pardolesi, Roberto; Van den Bergh, J. Roger (eds), "Post-Chicago Developments in Antitrust Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002)

Book Title: Post-Chicago Developments in Antitrust Law

Editor(s): Cucinotta, Antonio; Pardolesi, Roberto; Van den Bergh, J. Roger

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843760016

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Post-Chicago, Post-Seattle and the Dilemma of Globalization

Author(s): Fox, Eleanor M.

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

4. Post-Chicago, post-Seattle and the
dilemma of globalization
Eleanor M. Fox

INTRODUCTION
Antitrust law is not law-and-economics in a vacuum. As Professor Giuliano
Amato so eloquently observed in his book, Antitrust and the Bounds of
Power,1 antitrust law has a symbiosis with democracy. Citizens have a right to
freedom of action; government has the duty to prevent private power from
threatening the freedoms of the people; but there must be a balance to prevent
`power conferred on institutions for this purpose . . . from itself enlarging to
the point of destroying the very freedoms it ought to protect'. As Professor
Amato admonishes: `There are two bounds that should never be crossed; one
beyond which the unlegitimated power of individuals arises, the other beyond
which legitimate public power becomes illegitimate. Where do these two
bounds lie? This is the real nub of the dilemma.'2
The Chicago School controversy can be seen in terms of this dilemma.
Chicago School economics is founded on the premise that governments
should stay out of markets; they should let markets work. People benefit
from markets and the economic freedoms they imply ­ as producers, to
engage in the commerce of their choice; as consumers to choose, and to
receive better goods and services at lower prices. In the United States in the
late 1970s, Chicago adherents declaimed that the second bound of power had
been crossed: public power illegitimately intruded into markets and
restrained trade.
Pre-Chicago, Americans had feared a gross breach ...