Brown Shoe Merger Policy and the Glorification of Waste

In its 1962 Brown Shoe decision the Supreme Court agreed with a lower court that a merger of shoe manufacturers was unlawful because it led to reduced prices and better shoes. That decision led to a nearly twenty-year period in which the lower courts routinely condemned mergers because they reduced costs or led to better quality products or more efficient distribution. Later the ideology of merger enforcement changed, however, realigning it with antitrust law more generally.  The Supreme Court