29 Comments

This cheered me up more than any article I've read in months; his resignation being a wonderful development in a decrepit institution that has seemingly been circling the drain since Bush v. Gore. [and lifetime appointments are a hideously stupid idea [from a time when life expectancy was 35!] that we shouldn't have to live with anymore]. Parenthetically, I would like to read something here about the failure to break up GM in the 60s, a failure of competition which lead to the wretched car designs of the 70s, which in turn opened up the door to the Japanese and European domination we have had. I also assume Matt will be reviewing the anti-trust records of the likely nominees, which i look forward to.

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Thanks for this piece. I believe your essay on Justice Breyer should have been included in Goliath, because it highlights key historical facts concerning the growth and power of monopolies in the law. He is the reincarnation of Judge Bork and just as harmful, inasmuch as he's backed by Democrats, who ought to be against monopolies, but, for the most part, are not. He's helped create lots of bad law and precedent that now need to be addressed.

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Really great article, Matt. I remember his appointment & that Town of Concord case, which was really horrible. His game (like all of them) was to "smooth out" the facts so they would fit into this really simplistic Bayesian framework & then he could pronounce, "it would be *irrational* to restrict output!"

This article also reminded me that some of the absolute worst cases in telecom ended up at the S.Ct. Trinko--should have been Illinois Brick'd out! Linkline...was a miracle that it got that far. Max Blecher was truly a magician of antitrust law--one of the greats.

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When Judge Breyer was nominated to the Supreme Court Bill Kovacic wrote an analysis of his Court of Appeals antitrust decisions and demonstrated that Breyer was virtually identical in his reasoning and outcomes to Judge Posner. But for some reason most people called Posner a conservative and Breyer a liberal!

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Jan 27, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

Justice Breyer’s position on patents is as bad or worse than anti-trust. “Judicial exceptions” by the SCOTUS are the most egregious “activist” “legislating from the bench”-type actions negatively affecting Inventors to an extent few though possible. While anti-trust is about big business and monopoly control: patents were intended to give Inventors the ability to compete against incumbents. Article 1 Sec 8 of the Constitution is fairly easy to understand. Until eBay (2006) injunctive relief was a given. Breyer’s decisions in Mayo & Alice alone are absurd and contributed to the decline in innovation in the US.

See, https://www.patentdocs.org/2016/04/the-fantastical-world-of-justice-stephen-breyer.html.

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/03/23/supreme-court-breathtakingly-dishonest-completely-clueless/id=79857/

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Jan 27, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

Hi Matt

For something a little bit different The German Match Monopoly which only ended in the mid 80s. It's a short but entertaining bit of monopoly history.

From 1930 until 1983 Germany had strict controls on the manufacture and marketing of matches. This was all done to secure a loan from a Swedish businessman.

https://youtu.be/M1NAeQHro1Y

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Stephen Breyer was responsible for Verizonm that says everything we need to know about him. Good riddance to him!

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Jan 27, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

Thank you for this searing portrait of a vastly underreported and vital aspect of Breyer's SCOTUS record.

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Jan 27, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

Thank you, Matt -- and good riddance to Breyers

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Jan 28, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

Thanks for this, Matt.

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Jan 27, 2022·edited Jan 28, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

Oh really? The Fed's funny money can't buy their way out of this? You mean money is worthless when you can't actually make anything of actual value??? Oh, please do go on..... I'd love to hear a joint discussion with Michael Hudson or Guy Standing on this topic.

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Wow, terrific journalism on Justice Breyer's record on big business. I circulated it.

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Ever come across Frederick Rowe's 'Faustian Pact.': https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/glj72&div=43&id=&page=

You can thank me later

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The most important point was not made here and that is that Breyer is a filthy kikerat, ie jew. Therefore corporatism/tyranny is in his very DNA as a child of the devil.

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Progressive slob

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Dead link in "He told Breyer his views were “presumptuous and elitist,”" : https://www.loc.gov/law/find/nominations/breyer/hearing.pdf

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