Donald Turner’s Merger Guidelines as an Antitrust Watershed

Abstract

The idea of agency-issued guidelines as an effective enforcement tool was novel indeed when Professor Donald F. Turner unveiled it as a priority upon being nominated to be head the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division in 1965. This chapter reviews how Turner and we who were on his team worked to create the Merger Guidelines that were issued on his last day in office in May 1968. It also discusses how Turner’s novel merger guidelines idea has since been widely used in United States and globally.