§§ 1–7) is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce and consequently prohibits unfair monopolies.

"[5]At Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader 310 U.S. 469, 310 U. S. 492-93 and n. 15: The legislative history of the Sherman Act, as well as the decisions of this Court interpreting it, show that it was not aimed at policing interstate transportation or movement of goods and property.

The legislative history and the voluminous literature which was generated in the course of the enactment and during fifty years of litigation of the Sherman Act give no hint that such was its purpose.

The goal was to prevent restraints of free competition in business and commercial transactions which tended to restrict production, raise prices, or otherwise control the market to the detriment of purchasers or consumers of goods and services, all of which had come to be regarded as a special form of public injury.

Thus, these sections supplement each other in an effort to prevent businesses from violating the spirit of the Act, while technically remaining within the letter of the law.

Since the 1970s, however, courts have held plaintiffs to higher standards, giving antitrust defendants an opportunity to resolve cases in their favor before significant discovery under FRCP 12(b)(6).

That is, to overcome a motion to dismiss, plaintiffs, under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, must plead facts consistent with FRCP 8(a) sufficient to show that a conspiracy is plausible (and not merely conceivable or possible).

This protects defendants from bearing the costs of antitrust "fishing expeditions"; however it deprives plaintiffs of perhaps their only tool to acquire evidence (discovery).

While the Act was aimed at regulating businesses, its prohibition of contracts restricting commerce was applied to the activities of labor unions until the 1930s.

[32] The Supreme Court enunciated the test for determining when a state statute is in irreconcilable conflict with Section 1 of the Sherman Act in Rice v. Norman Williams Co.

A statute can be condemned on its face only when it mandates, authorizes or places irresistible pressure on private parties to engage in conduct constituting a per se violation of Section 1.

[34] If unreasonable anticompetitive effects are created, the required conduct violates Section 1[35] and the statute is in irreconcilable conflict with the Sherman Act.

Preemption should not occur "simply because in a hypothetical situation a private party's compliance with the statute might cause him to violate the antitrust laws".

They argued that a conflict existed because the statute permitted "auto dealers to invoke state power for the purpose of restraining intrabrand competition".

The third case cited to support the "anticompetitive effect" guideline is Joseph E. Seagram & Sons v. Hostetter, in which the Court rejected a facial Sherman Act preemption challenge to a statute requiring that persons selling liquor to wholesalers affirm that the price charged was no higher than the lowest price at which sales were made anywhere in the United States during the previous month.

The Court stated that rather than imposing "irresistible economic pressure" on sellers to violate the Sherman Act, the statute "appears firmly anchored to the assumption that the Sherman Act will deter any attempts by the appellants to preserve their ... price level [in one state] by conspiring to raise the prices at which liquor is sold elsewhere in the country".

Rice states that while particular conduct or arrangements by private parties would be subject to per se or rule of reason analysis to determine liability, "[t]here is no basis ... for condemning the statute itself by force of the Sherman Act.

The House committee, in reporting the bill which was adopted without change, declared: No attempt is made to invade the legislative authority of the several States or even to occupy doubtful grounds.

No system of laws can be devised by Congress alone which would effectually protect the people of the United States against the evils and oppression of trusts and monopolies.

The great thing that this bill does, except affording a remedy, is to extend the common-law principles, which protected fair competition in trade in old times in England, to international and interstate commerce in the United States.

Rand, who described herself as "a radical for capitalism",[52] opposed antitrust law not only on economic grounds but also morally, as a violation of property rights, asserting that the "meaning and purpose" of antitrust law is "the penalizing of ability for being ability, the penalizing of success for being success, and the sacrifice of productive genius to the demands of envious mediocrity".

[53] In 1890, Representative William E. Mason said "trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprise.

[citation needed] Economist Thomas DiLorenzo notes that Senator Sherman sponsored the 1890 William McKinley tariff just three months after the Sherman Act, and agrees with The New York Times which wrote on October 1, 1890: "That so-called Anti-Trust law was passed to deceive the people and to clear the way for the enactment of this Pro-Trust law relating to the tariff."

Support for both an antitrust law and tariff hikes would maintain high prices while avoiding the more obvious bilking of consumers.

[57] Posner further believes, along with a number of others, including Bork, that genuinely inefficient cartels and coercive monopolies, the target of the act, would be self-corrected by market forces, making the strict penalties of antitrust legislation unnecessary.

[57] Conversely, liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas criticized the judiciary for interpreting and enforcing the antitrust law unequally: "From the beginning it [the Sherman Act] has been applied by judges hostile to its purposes, friendly to the empire builders who wanted it emasculated ... trusts that were dissolved reintegrated in new forms ...