linguistic:voice_change
Rise of the Chicago School (1970s–present)

The "pivotal event" in this shift was the Supreme Court's 1977 decision Continental Television, Inc. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc. In a decision that prominently cited Chicago school of economics scholarship, the GTE Sylvania Court ruled that non-price vertical restrictions in contracts were no longer per se illegal and should be analyzed under the rule of reason. Overall, the Supreme Court's antitrust rulings during this era on collusion cases under section 1 of the Sherman Act reflected tension between the older "absolutist" approach and the newer Chicago endorsing the rule of reason and economic analysis. The Justice Department and FTC lost most of the monopolization cases they brought under section 2 of the Sherman Act during this era. One of the government's few anti-monopoly victories was United States v. AT&T, which led to the breakup of Bell Telephone and its monopoly on U.S. telephone service in 1982. The general "trimming back" of antitrust law in the face of economic analysis also resulted in more permissive standards for mergers. In the Supreme Court's 1974 decision United States v. General Dynamics Corp., the federal government lost a merger challenge at the Supreme Court for the first time in over 25 years.