A New Look at the Jurisdiction in ALCOA

Abstract

One of the best-known antitrust decisions in the last quarter of a century is United States v. Aluminum Company of America et al., now usually referred to as the ALCOA case. Although the Sherman Act had for some time been given an extraterritorial application when American corporations were involved, the novelty of ALCOA was that the decision, written by that eminent jurist, Judge Learned Hand, for the first time interpreted our antitrust laws as rendering illegal contracts of a foreign corporation which were made abroad with other foreign corporations and which related to business carried on and to acts to be performed abroad. No American party was involved, and no act took place in the United States, in the part of the case that is here to be considered. Jurisdiction was claimed merely on the basis of an adverse “effect” on our foreign and domestic commerce.