Mercantilism, Corporations, and Liberty: The Fallacies of ‘Lochnerian’ Antitrust

Progressive legal theorist Daniel Crane has argued that libertarians who believe that monopoly results from government intervention should accept antitrust law because the monopoly problem is a result of state government passage of General Incorporation Acts after the Civil War. The resulting corporate consolidation and control of industry necessitated federal antitrust law as a corrective. Crane has all of this wrong. State permission for incorporation was an ancient tool of mercantile grants of monopoly still in practice by state legislatures in the early 19th century, and the General Incorporation Acts were a major expression of a successful Jacksonian antimonopoly policy.