MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR

Written by Stephen McIntyre
O’Melveny & Myers LLP Los Angeles, California

NEW FRONTIERS IN ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT

Earlier this year, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who heads the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, declared that we are witnessing a "once-in-a-century inflection point in terms of reach of corporate power and popular support for addressing corporate power."¹ At the same time, Mr. Kanter said, "we’re seeing a once-in-many-generation[s] shift in how markets function, and the need to update and adapt our antitrust enforcement to address new market realities."² This "21st-century anti-monopoly movement," as some have called it,³ has brought antitrust back into front-page news headlines, dinner-table conversations, and political stump speeches.

Antitrust law, which has taken shape through more than a century of common-law development,⁴ is not known for turning on a dime. How well can existing antitrust doctrines be applied to novel (and rapidly changing) technologies, industries, and markets? Should the antitrust statutes even be applied to the range of social and economic concerns that currently animate our political discourse? In this edition of Competition, an impressive line-up of authors takes on issues at the cutting edge of public and private antitrust enforcement.