Word: antitrusters
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During the current term, Burger and Blackmun disagreed 20% of the time. More important, Blackmun's opinions reflected a somewhat surer sense of his role as a Supreme Court Justice, and even occasionally a more liberal bent. In two cases involving antitrust law and criminal procedure, his vote tipped the result 5 to 4 against the conservatives. In a First Amendment case, Burger may have been following Blackmun. The junior Minnesotan expanded the free-speech protection of advertisements and cited with approval a dissent from an opinion he himself had written only a year earlier. Once its slowest writer...
Lawyer Engman does not use the term conspiracy lightly. He means it in its strict antitrust sense. Engman's FTC has been quick-too quick, some business critics say-to deploy the key weapon that the commission shares with the Justice Department: the power to press antitrust charges. To date, Engman's legal staff has brought no fewer than 31 antitrust suits, most notably its 1973 complaint against Exxon and seven other big U.S. oil companies. The FTC's argument: the firms control so much of the petroleum business-from wellhead through refinery to gasoline pump-that...
Critics complain that Engman's emphasis on antitrust may mire the FTC in years of litigation, to the detriment of its consumer watchdog activities. But defenders of his legal activism point to the fact that for the first time in years, top law-school graduates are seeking jobs at the FTC. One current question in Washington is how long Engman will be there to lead them. It would be no surprise to some Engman watchers if, when Michigan Democratic Senator Philip Hart retires after his current term, Native Son Engman tries for his seat...
...effect on prices is plain." Such naked agreements were long common in bar associations; 34 states once had some kind of minimum fee schedule covering legal services. But in recent years the number has dropped to 18, as lawyers began to worry that they might indeed be subject to antitrust laws. The traditional theory was that antitrust regulation did not cover the "learned professions." If that were so, said Burger last week, "lawyers would be able to adopt anticompetitive practices with impunity." Conceding that some "forms of competition usual in the business world may be demoralizing to the ethical standards...
Vain Effort. The court's unanimous decision did not specifically apply to all legal fees, much less to fees charged in other professions; but the implications are strong. "The decision shows that all professions are subject to the antitrust laws," exulted Alan Morrison, a director of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, who argued the Goldfarbs' case. "Doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers-all must now recognize that when they do business in the community, they'll be looked on as businessmen. It means lower prices and more competition." Indeed in Virginia, in a vain effort to head...