Sherman Act

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 is a United States antitrust law that prohibits unfair monopolies and promotes free competition among businesses. The law broadly prohibits anticompetitive agreements and unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize a market. The Act authorizes the Department of Justice to bring suits to enjoin conduct violating the law and also allows private parties to bring suits for treble damages. The law aims to prevent the artificial raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply, and its purpose is to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect consumers from abuses. The law is divided into three sections, with Section 1 delineating and prohibiting specific means of anticompetitive conduct, Section 2 dealing with end results that are anti-competitive in nature, and Section 3 extending the provisions of Section 1 to U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. The law has been applied in various notable cases, including Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. United States and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, and has been amended by the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Robinson-Patman Act.learn more on wikipedia