So, this is a fair take, but also, the actual statute that drives antitrust law right now is still insane, and that has enabled lots of unnecessary judge-made i

So, this is a fair take, but also, the actual statute that drives antitrust law right now is still insane, and that has enabled lots of unnecessary judge-made interpretation. The sherman act starts by saying "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. " Couple things: 1. Because it's a federal statute, it has to be within congress's powers, which is why it only applies to interstate trade/commerce, rather than purely intrastate. 2. All contracts are a restraint of trade of some form. So this was a bad codification of common law. This immediately led to judges adding words (IE finding only contracts that "unduly" restrain trade are void). It has only gotten worse in the past century. So when you say "in the 80's they decided to repeal it from the bench", this is right, but it would also be fair to say "judges were forced to try to interpret this thing for a century because it was badly written, and some eventually decided the earlier interpretations were wrong". Congress could have fixed all this at any point.