Legal reasoning and the jurisprudence of vertical restraints: the limitations of neoclassical economic analysis in the resolution of antitrust disputes

The question of how antitrust policy "ought" to treat vertical distribution restraints in the 1980s under section 1 of the Sherman Act(1) embodies the difficulties entailed when any field of law becomes captive to a single paradigm. (2) Inherently political assumptions concerning the proper scope of property and contract rights and government power to regulate the economy, and unrealistic factual assumptions concerning the nature of vertical economic relationships have come to the fore in currently fashionable analysis of vertical restraints.(3)