Restraint of Trade by the Supreme Court: The Utah Pie Case

The Supreme Court shows a growing determination in its antitrust decisions to convert laws designed to promote competition into laws which regulate or hamper the competitive process. Succeeding interpretations of the Clayton and Robinson-Patman Acts–and, by infectious contamination, the Sherman Act–demonstrate an increasingly apparent disregard for the central purpose of antitrust, the promotion of consumer welfare through the promotion of a competitive market process. Now, in Utah Pie Co. v. Continental Baking Co., the Supreme Court has used section 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act to strike directly at price competition itself.