Competition Policy in America, 1888-1992

Rudolph J. R. Peritz is Professor of Law at New York Law School. He has been a Langdell Fellow at Harvard Law School, as well as an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Texas. He has written and spoken widely on competition policy, antitrust history, and computer law and policy.

"Provocative, ambitious and exciting...."--Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School"A superb and sophisticated study of the social, political, economic, and intellectual debates that have shaped competition law and policy for the past century."--Edward A. Purcell, Jr., New York Law School"The book is bold and provocative....a truly daunting enterprise that few others have dared to attempt."--Law and History Review"Everybody who is interested in twentieth century constitutional history or current constitutional law will want to read Competition Policy in America. Peritz offers an extremely fresh perspective of the era."--The Law and Politics Book Review"Comprehensive, scholarly, and well documented....Recommended for legal scholars and graduate-level and professional economists."--Choice"Mr. Peritz has written a fascinating account of America's flirtations, engagements and disappointments with 'competition' and the 'market.' Neither an abstract history of ideas nor a flat account of legal policies. This book combines the best of intellectual history and informed political commentary. Peritz traces the uses and abuses of the rhetoric of competition by politicians, populists and policy mavens across the century. A great read."--David Kennedy,Harvard Law School"This work is provocative, ambitious and exciting, a sweeping reinterpretation of the rhetorics of law and political economy deployed in a century-long public argument about the practical meaning of freedom. Peritz is most original in the way he brings together for analysis ways of thinking that are too often kept separate--thinking about competition and thinking about property, business combinations and labor combinations, free trade in commerce and free tradein ideas. His work comes just in time to remind us of the radical anti-monopoly traditions of American law and politics, of the "free enterprise" ideology as a critique of private economic power andits abuses as well as of government. If this book has the success it deserves, it should prompt a fundamental rethinking of conventional wisdoms in antitrust policy, labor law, free speech, and the relations of individuals to business entities and the state."--Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School"Competition Policy in America is a superb and sophisticated study of the social, political, economic, and intellectual debates that have shaped competition law and policy for the past century. Blending acute legal and economic analysis into the broader currents of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history, it illuminates the conflicts that drove the evolution of competition policy and significantly expands our understanding of the wholefield of government economic regulation."--Edward A. Purcell, Jr., New York Law School"It is a splendid critical history of the economic theory known as the Chicago School."American Historical Review"...provides an inispensable framework for understanding modern political economy--whether political campaign finance reform, corporate takeover regulation, or current attitudes toward the New Deal legacy."--Bimonthly Review of Law Books"...this impressive and important book should command the attention of all political historians, legal scholars, and social theorists."--The American Journal of Legal History"The book is bold and provocative....Often eloquent, insistently contentious, and refreshingly insightful, Peritz gives us a bracing and challenging account of the evolution of antitrust law....Peritz has provided us with a book that will long be seen as a central contribution to meeting that need."--Law and History Review"...It is a valuable work."--Labor History