The Effect of Business Conditions on Early Judicial Decisions Concerning Restraint of Trade

It appears to legal historians that the Supreme Court of the United States must have gone off the main track in 1933 when it handed down the celebrated Appalachian Coals decision upholding a joint selling agency. Only six years before, the Court had condemned a similar collective arrangement maintained by the Trenton Potteries; and seven years later, in 1940, the Court rendered a decision in the Socony-Vacuum Oil Case that revealed an abrupt return to its generally firm attitude toward collective action on the part of business concerns. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to reconcile the 1933 Appalachian Coals decision with the 1940 Socony-Vacuum Oil decision, and, as prices rose and shortages developed during the 1940's, the judicial attitude toward restraint of trade in various forms became progressively stiffer and stiffer. A parallel shift in the climate of court opinion against trade associations can be noted in the 1920's by comparing the decisions near the beginning of the decade, when trade was lax and prices were soft, with those a few years later when prosperity was again in evidence. One might even pose the question: Do the courts follow business conditions, as they are alleged to follow the election returns?