The Green Bag Volume XXIII
June, 1911
Number 6
The Standard Oil Decision BY THE EDITOR
N United States v. E. C. Knight Co.,‘ Mr. Justice Harlan recognized, in a dissenting opinion prepared with much care, the propriety of a reasonable partial restraint of trade. It is common for judges who have rendered dissenting opinions to adapt their views in accord ance with the prevailing authority and to recede from positions previously assumed. Such a practice, while it may have its drawbacks, undoubtedly makes for the unity and continuity of judicial interpretation. If Mr. Justice Harlan has partly modified his original views he has subjected himself to no reproach thereby. Chief Justice White, however, in the
Standard Oil case, not yet reported, adheres, roughly speaking, to the general position taken in his dissenting opinion
in United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association,1 in which, referring to the majority contention that the Sherman act embraced reasonable as well as unreasonable restraints of trade,
he said that this construction would be “tantamount to an assertion that the act of Congress is itself unreasonable.”
Chief Justice White’s opinion divides its attention between two main subjects of discussion, the conclusions reached
with reference both to the law and to l 156 U. S. 1. ‘166 U. S. 290.
the facts being equally important. In construing the law the Court reached a conservative result by emphasizing the principle that the statute must be interpreted in the light of reason. The decision may readily be misinterpreted by those who too readily jump to the conclusion that the Court has attached a meaning to the statute permitting combinations and contracts in reasonable restraint of trade. As a correct state ment portantof phase the Court's of the view subject of calls this im_ for careful analysis, we shall revert to it later. The outcome of the new interpre tation of the statute is practically, however, to confine its scope of applica tion within bounds of reasonable modera tion. The Court was very careful not to subject itself to the imputation,
expressed in Mr. Justice Harlan’s dis senting opinion, of an attempt to frustrate the legislative will; it gave full effect to the prohibition of monopolistic contracts and combinations. At the same time its language was imbued with a sober purpose to safeguard the rights of combinations not to be treated as unlawful by reason of their mere bigness.
The other effect of the decision is to include such acts as those specified in the bill of complaint as embraced in the definition of “unlawful mo
