The Last Autonomist

Louis Brandeis was the greatest opponent of industrial "bigness," but not the first. This essay considers his ideas about policy toward large-scale firms in the context of the controversy in the Supreme Court over the interpretation of the Sherman Act between 1890 and 1911. Opponents of bigness ("autonomists") on the Court believed that allowing the market to determine the size of firms made firms too large and supported direct controls on growth, and opposed the common law rule of reason as an obstacle to limiting the size of firms. In 1911, the Court definitively rejected both these propositions, interpreting the Sherman Act to include the rule of reason and leaving the question of firm size to fair competition. Brandeis, surprisingly, supported the Court on both these issues. The essay discusses his reasons for doing so, based in a misreading of the implications of bounded rationality, a concept Brandeis clearly anticipated, his gradual recognition of why bigness had succeeded in the United States, and the disappointment this caused him. It concludes with a short speculation on how Brandeis might approach the contemporary problem of climate change.