Formella, John A.

Marquette University Law School

Marquette Law ReviewVolume 34Issue 4 Spring 1951 Article 12Book Review: A Treatise on the Anti-Trust Laws ofthe United StatesJohn A. FormellaFollow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulrPart of the Law CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion inMarquette Law Review by an authorized administrator of Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contactmegan.obrien@marquette.edu.Repository CitationJohn A. Formella, Book Review: A Treatise on the Anti-Trust Laws of the United States, 34 Marq. L. Rev. 310 (1951).Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol34/iss4/12BOOK REVIEWSA Treatise on the Anti-Trust Laws of the United States, including allrelated trade regulatory laws. By Harry A. Toulmin, Jr. Cincinnati:The W. H. Anderson Company, 1949, 7 vols., $150.00. Thus farpublished Vol. I, xxxv, 506, Vol. II, xxvii, 466, Vol. III, xxviii, 448,Vol. IV, xxii, 881, Vol. V, xxii, 1074. In process of publication,Volumes VI and VII.Sixty years of anti-trust legislation, administrative enforcement, andjudicial proceedings have confronted the American business scenewith multitudinous problems. Mr Toulmin, a distinguished authorityin the field, has performed the monumental task of putting togetherin one seven volume treatise, a comprehensive study of the anti-trustlaws of the United States.Anti-trust legislation took on statutory form in the closing yearsof the nineteenth century through passage of the Sherman Act and hassince that time been supplemented by the enactments of the Miller-Tydings Act, Van Nuys Act, Robinson-Patman Act, Federal TradeCommission Act and others, all of which have been amendments, modi-fications, or supplements of the anti-trust laws. During this periodnumerous courts and administrative tribunals have interpreted theanti-trust laws in thousands of decisions which have tended to changethe entire field of American business and international trade. Al-though the Supreme Court of the United States has endeavored to in-terpret and apply these laws in a uniform manner, the wide diversityof opinion between justices through the years has created a situation inwhich the legal profession has been confronted with increasingly com-plex problems in their task of guiding American business. By combingyears of practical experience with scholastic research, Mr. Toulmin hasbeen able to make available to the legal and business world, a com-prehensive study of the anti-trust laws of the United States.Along with being an intense study of law, administration, andjudicial decision, Mr. Toulmin has injected into the treatise a mark ofpersonality by way of discussing the effect of anti-trust legislation onAmerican economy and political stability. An individual with a broadbackground of experience and knowledge, the author has taken cogni-zance of a trend actuated by the subject legislation. As a result, theauthor not only reports law and its interpretation, but he discusses whata member of the public can and cannot do. He indicates the trend ofdecisions so that, when advising clients, counsel will have before himthe probable change in the law or evolution of the decision as indicatedby past decisions. Consequently the treatise is a factual and practicaleveryday source of assistance to the practitioner.BOOK REVIEWSThe first three volumes cover in detail the various statutes and theirlegislative history. Volumes four and five present the author's applica-tion of the anti-trust laws to patents, labor, commerce, and the profes-sions. Enforcement of the anti-trust laws by the Department of Justiceand the Federal Trades Commission is dealt with in volume six. Al-though each volume has its respective index, volume seven contains amaster index along with forms, table of cases, etc. The particularvolumes will be kept current through the use of pocket supplements.Insofar as anti-trust litigation is becoming an everyday incident inthe activities of American business, Mr. Toulmin's Treatise would be avaluable asset to the lawyer involved in the problems connected withthe anti-trust laws of the United States.JOHN A. FORMELLAUniversity of Notre Dame Natural Law Institute Proceedings, Vol. 1iI.Edited by Edward F. Barrett. Notre Dame, Indiana; College ofLaw, University of Notre Dame Press, 1950. Pp. 137. $2.00.Through a process of reasoning which is not quite clear, modernman has come more and more to the conclusion that the best reasonfor rejecting a theory or concept is that it has been believed in the past,and the best reason for accepting another theory or concept is that itis only presently propounded. This is as true in law as it is in anyother field. Acting under the fiction that change is progress, man hasdiscarded the concept of the Natural Law, and has substituted in itsplace secularism, pragmatism, and subjectivism. That these latter phil-osophies are inadequate to stem the tide of tyranny which has flashedrepeatedly over the world in the past few decades, and which nowthreatens to inundate it, has become clear to all but a few adherents-those who, for reasons of their own, are afraid to admit of a powergreater than the state. Many who see the inadequacies inherent in thesephilosophies, however, still cling to them, for they lack the knowledgeof a truer, more able system of law.The Natural Law, the "laws of nature and of nature's God" invokedin the Declaration of Independence, looks to a power greater than thestate. And if the state is not the absolute power, then it, too, is subjectto law. Chancellor Kent affirms this when he says, "States or bodiespolitic are to be considered as moral persons having a public will, cap-able and free to do right.and wrong, inasmuch as they are collectionsof individuals, each of whom carries with him into the service of thecommunity the same binding law of morality and religion which oughtto control his conduct in private life."' Only this philosophy affirmsthe dignity of man, and only this is his salvation in a totalitarian world.I I Kent Comm. 2.

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