What about the Supreme Court? The lurking threat to US antitrust reform.

Presuming that vertical conduct promotes competition The I Amex i majority opinion implicitly treats vertical conduct as presumptively competitive; at least, that is how the I Amex i dissent reads it.[47] To the extent that view is credited, it increases the practical burden on plaintiffs challenging vertical conduct. 32 See I Amex i , 138 SCt 2290-91 (indicating that plaintiff's case failed because plaintiffs did not satisfy "the first step in the rule of reason": proving an anticompetitive effect). 59 To similar effect, the agencies could seek to persuade the Court to adhere to its pre-1980s precedents in merger law, which the lower courts have reinterpreted but the Supreme Court has not revisited. Although lower courts can resist such suggestions, and some have done so (for good reasons), Court dicta at a minimum create hurdles for reformers seeking to strengthen the antitrust laws. [Extracted from the article]