"Antitrust negli Stati Uniti: l'istituzione imperfetta più antica che regola comportamenti anticompetitivi

The antitrust laws were originally created in order to preserve the market from anti-competitive behaviors. As well-documented, market competition promotes innovation, growth as well as all the privileges for the consumers that come with the price competition for similar goods. Antitrust laws and organisms are created in order to patrol these core factors worldwide. The major issue in the United States with the antitrust laws is the role played by judges and verdicts of the Court in general: being the common law legal system more influenced by analogous verdicts issued by courts all around the American territory, it may happen that some new verdicts contradict other sentences issued before. Furthermore, the antitrust laws has always been subject to political speculations, which led to some criticism by a number of scholars: among them, the very author of the milestone on which the anti-competitive behaviors are regulated, Senator Sherman. Other than being a problem, sometimes it may reveal itself as a huge advantage having this particular type of legal system compared to what can happen in countries adopting civil law legal system. Given the high reliance on codes (mostly civil and penal codes) and the difficulties to change them in relatively short time, it may happen that some codes protect interests that are no longer in line with the development of economics. Since the end of World War II, the economic world has experienced as many changes as any in the history of human development and it is critical that those changes are supported by a system of laws coherent and sufficiently dynamic to sustain those rapid changes in landscape. In this elaborate there will be an overview of the main advantages and disadvantages that come with the antitrust laws within a dynamic legal system as the American one. Through the review of some particular verdicts of the Supreme Court, the ratio behind the sentences will be examined as well as put in the context of the expanding economics.