Most articles describing retiring Justice John Paul Stevens’ career on the U.S. Supreme Court have focused on his progressive shift over time to the Court’s liberal wing. It has not been noted that Stevens deserves principal credit for initiating the vast change in the Court’s understanding of antitrust law since the late 1970s, as the Court came to embrace the economic antitrust analysis of the Chicago School, perhaps his most lasting contribution.
Prior to his appointment to the bench, Stevens was an antitrust lawyer in Chicago; he was also a longtime friend of Edward Levi, an antitrust professor at the University of Chicago Law School, later dean and president of the university. Levi and Stevens were schoolmates from elementary school through college.
