Anti-monopoly and Regulated Industries

The AMRI approach recognizes that the challenges of concentrated private power require solutions beyond antitrust law—particularly the narrow interpretation of antitrust law that has prevailed in recent decades. In doing so, the AMRI approach revives many of the insights of older legal, political, and economic traditions of reform, but also offers fresh insights given the radically different political tensions and realities of the neoliberal era. The first half of the AMRI Academy explores both the scale of the problem of monopoly concentration in the United States and some of the key legal tools that have the potential to address that problem. Week 1 highlights monopoly power’s influence on the U.S. economy and society and begins to surface the transformations in law that have enabled the growth of private corporate power. Week 2 dives further into the conservative and neoliberal ideological projects that have reshaped antitrust law and regulatory policy, blunting these tools’ ability to exert democratic control over concentrated private power. Week 3 explores the history of public utility law, its central place in the Progressives’ vision of the “social control of business,” and its contemporary promise as an anti-monopoly tool. Week 4 explores the origins of the inadequacies of contemporary antitrust law and offers more democratic alternatives.