“Normal” Business Behavior and the Justice Department

Abstract

Antitrust indictments against business firms often appear to businessmen and the community to represent an unfair attack on normal business behavior by an “anti-business” arm of the government.

The author examines the rationale for the enforcement of proscriptions against one form of business activity—price fixing—and concludes that where such behavior is concerned, considerations of “fairness” or “normality” can have no bearing.