type: timeline_event
The U.S. Supreme Court formally adopts Robert Bork's "consumer welfare standard" as the governing framework for antitrust law, declaring that "Congress designed the Sherman Act as a 'consumer welfare prescription'" in direct citation of Bork's 1978 book "The Antitrust Paradox." Just one year after Bork's publication, the Court embraces his revisionist interpretation of antitrust law's purpose, fundamentally transforming enforcement from protecting competitive markets and preventing concentrated economic power to the narrow criterion of short-term consumer prices. Critically, the Court fails to define what "consumer welfare" means, perpetuating the deliberate ambiguity in Bork's formulation that diverges from economists' understanding of the term. This adoption represents a complete reversal of antitrust law's original intent to prevent monopolies and protect democratic governance from concentrated corporate power, replacing it with a standard that in practice permits massive consolidation across every sector of the American economy. The speed of adoption - one year from book publication to Supreme Court doctrine - demonstrates the effectiveness of conservative legal infrastructure in reshaping law through coordinated scholarship, judicial appointments, and institutional influence. This transformation enables the wave of mergers, monopolization, and corporate power consolidation that will define the next four decades.