Sherman Antitrust Act : A Critical And Necessary Statute

The Sherman Act was created in 1890 had two major provisions which was to prohibit conspiracies to restrain trade and also to outlaw monopolization. In 1914 the Clayton Act was passed to expand off of the Sherman Act. The Clayton

The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 (which also includes an Amendment known as the Wheeler-Lea Act of 1938)

During the Progressive Era, Regulatory Agencies fail to provide and do their work, legislation ere made with the purpose for the common good of the citizen that suffer from the big corporation abuse, most of the corporation state strict rule but never got to accomplish them or the personal was too much expensive. The Supreme Court during the United State v Knight Company state diminished the effectiveness of the Sherman Anti-Trust act by ruling that manufacturing was not an interstate commerce (Document 5). The Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the United State government, established in by the Federal Trade Commission Act. Its principal mission was the promotion of consumer protection and the elimination/prevention of anti-competitive

The Sherman (related to preventing one company from becoming too powerful) Act 1890, the purpose of the act was to destroy (companies with too much power) that were using their power to harm (community of people/all good people in the world); and (one company that controls too much) is someone that has total control over a clearly stated/particular company). In the 1800s there were a many amount of businesses growing in the United States. The U.S was making people pay for products (that are bought and sold) or services they gave/given at high price that put pressure on people because some people didn't have the money to pay for everything other people have. The congress passed the act in 1890 it was the first to be passed. The Act had to go

United States antitrust law is a collection of federal and state government laws, which regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers. The main statute was the Sherman act of 1890, it is the basis for U.S. antitrust law, and many states have modeled their own statutes upon it. As weaknesses in the Sherman Act became evident, Congress added amendments to it at various times through 1950 the Clayton act of 1914,

Michigan has adopted the Antitrust Reform Act. Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 445.774a. The Act allows employers to obtain agreements , protecting their reasonable competitive business interests by prohibiting employment with competitors. Id. But the agreement must be reasonable “as to its duration, geographical area, and the type of employment or line of business.”Id. To be reasonable, a restrictive covenant must “‘protect against the employee’s gaining some unfair advantage in competition with the employer, but not prohibit the employee from using general knowledge or skill.’” Coates v. Bastian Brothers, Inc, 276 Mich. App. 498, 741 N.W.2d 539  (2007) If the agreement is found to be unreasonable, a court may “limit the agreement to

Events that led to the creation of the FTC. July 2, 1890, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was the first law passed by congress to prevent monopolistic business practices. Named after Senator John Sherman of Ohio, he had this law to pass the senate with a unanimous vote of 51-1 and the House with a vote of 242-0. President Harrison signed it into law in 1890. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act authorized government to make it illegal to make a “restraint of trade or commerce among the several states or with foreign nations”. Those that did not abide by this law resulted in a $5,000 fine and a year in prison. “The Sherman Act was designed to reestablish competition but was loosely worded and unsuccessful to define terms as “trust,” “combination,” “conspiracy,” and “monopoly” (www.ourdocuments.gov, 2013)”. Because of this “loosely worded” act, the Supreme Court prevented the federal government from using the act for many years up until President Theodore Roosevelt came along with his “trust-busting” campaigns. In 1904 the Supreme Court finally supported the government in its suit for “termination of the Northern Securities Company and the act was further employed by President Taft in 1911 against the

The Sherman Antitrust Act is a law that Congress passed to prevent any one company from gaining a monopoly over a market. Additionally, this law helps protect new businesses from being crushed by larger corporations. For example, when the government stepped in to force Pac Bell Telphone Services to separate due to the company having to much control of the market. Now, these anti-trust laws are easily enforced in the present day, however in the early 19th-century lack of technology and payoffs made the implantation of these statutes tough. For example, when a large corporation wanted to buy a smaller one they could simply use a shell corporation to make the purchase without anyone being able to link the acquisition back to the original company.

This act didn’t cause any influencial effect on trusts but brought a Supreme Court case United States v. E.C. Knight Company. The Court ruled that the American Sugar Refining Company, one of the other defendants in the case, had not violated the law even though the company controlled about 98 percent of all sugar refining in the United States. The Court opinion reasoned that the company’s control of manufacture did not constitute a control of trade. The Court’s ruling in E. C. Knight seemed to end any government regulation of

This Act gave them the power to hammer down on companies that seemed threatening to them, making it a success. Equally important, there were also disadvantages for many of the consumers. Some of these inconveniences including, fixed prices, and poor quality. The public often does not respond well to these things making it a priority and a sign that things needed to change. The government isn’t always out to get people, in fact they often want to help, and by deciding on creating the Sherman Antitrust Act they indeed helped many a consumer get away from high and unfair prices. Besides, this economy, being of a competitive nature since our revolution, will not be left alone to be ruined by the many monopolies dominating it. The government often looks to protect this economy, resulting in the action to stop monopolies from ruling the market. Additionally, John Sherman, Secretary of Treasury under President Rutherford B. Hayes, Senator of Ohio, and principal author of the Sherman Antitrust Act, tells us of a reason of his own for this law being drawn up. The reason, as stated by Mr. Sherman, is to protect the country from the foul effects of the buildings of monopolies, rather than the final end result of the monopolies. He even went as far as to say that the actions of companies after they become monopolies are even good for innovation (“John Sherman”). People even now are

Unknowingly, Antitrust began a cycle of Rule of Reason, which is the Lax Enforcement, and the Per Se Rule, which is the tight enforcement (Boyes 2013, p 249). Litigation of the Antirust law was not frequent, and that’s because between the years of passage 1890 and 1914, only seven cases were tried by the Supreme Court, in which they broke up monopolized companies like Northern Securities, and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey; but also allowed the formation of major league baseball. This period of Lax Enforcement ended with the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act, and ushered in Per Se Rule. The changes to Antitrust laws gave a more clear definition to the law by guide lining the prohibitions of price discrimination, the creations of barriers to enter a market, outlaws mergers deemed unfair, and imbalanced methods of business; the Federal Trade Commission was also allowed to investigate into these practices. Since 1941, the FTC and it parent division, the Justice Department, had filed over 2,800 cases related to Antitrust, but it is the private sector that had an exponential amount lawsuits filed. Between the passage of these two laws and the Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, who prized the laws, any inkling of proof that a business could be monopolizing or engaging in unfair business practices, almost always lead to a guilty verdict that mostly results in a heavy fine, and in extreme

Antitrust law in the United States is a collection of federal and state government laws regulating the conduct and organization of business corporations with the intent to promote fair competition in an open-market economy for the benefit of the public. Congress passed the first antitrust statute, the Sherman Antitrust Act, in 1890 in response to the public outrage toward big business. In 1914, Congress passed two additional antitrust laws: the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Act. (The Antitrust Laws. Web.)

The Sherman Antitrust Act was enacted on July 2nd, 1890 which prohibits activities that restrict interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace.

In 1907 a federal court ruled that American Tobacco had a monopoly on licorice, a flavoring, and that the company was guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. After a long trial, the court prohibited the company from enjoying interstate trade until conditions were corrected. It went through the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided on May 29, 1911 that the company had to be dissolved. On Nov. 16, 1911 the Supreme Court issued a decree that the company had to be divided into three major parts: American Tobacco, Liggett and Myers, and P. Lorillard. The control of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company of Winston-Salem was also relinquished. James B. Duke, a multimillionaire by then, retired from active management of the American companies and turned

Despite its good intentions, the Act didn't hit all its targets. The Act emerged as a somewhat tenuous plan to break up the "big business" monopolies. The weaknesses of the Act are described by Chief Justice Stone: "The prohibitions of the Sherman Act were not stated in terms of precision or of crystal clarity and the Act itself does not define them. In consequence of the vagueness of its language, perhaps not uncalculated, the courts have been left to give content to the statute, and in the performance of that function it is inappropriate that courts should interpret its words in the light of its legislative history and of the particular evils at which the legislation was aimed." Ultimately, "there [was] no question that nearly everyone wanted to