AT&T-Time Warner Decision Shows Need to Rethink Antitrust Laws

By James B. Stewart, NYT Contributor

The last time there was an antitrust ruling as important as the one handed down Tuesday by Judge Richard J. Leon, cellphones didn’t exist. There was no such thing as the internet. Personal computers were years away from mass adoption.

There had not been a federal court ruling on a vertical merger — a combination of a buyer and a supplier — since 1979. As a result, Judge Leon’s opinion, which cleared the way for the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, “will be enormously significant,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, an influential antitrust professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “To a significant extent, this court was writing on a clean slate.”

Judge Leon himself cited a “dearth” of modern judicial precedent.

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