They prohibit a variety of practices that restrain trade, such as price-fixing conspiracies, corporate mergers likely to reduce the competitive vigor of particular markets, and predatory acts designed to achieve or maintain monopoly power. The historic goal of the antitrust laws is to protect economic freedom and opportunity by promoting competition in the marketplace. Competition in a free market benefits American consumers through lower prices, better quality and greater choice. Competition provides businesses the opportunity to compete on price and quality, in an open market and on a level playing field, unhampered by anticompetitive restraints.
Competition also tests and hardens American companies at home, the better to succeed abroad.
In 1870 Congress established the Department of Justice and made the Attorney General its chief officer. The Attorney General was given authority and control of U.S. Attorneys and all other counsel employed on behalf of the United States. Congress vested in the Attorney General supervisory power over U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Marshals, clerks, and other officers of the federal courts. A series of legislative enactments since 1870 have resulted in the Department of Justice and the Office of the Attorney General as they exist today. The Department has been accurately described as the largest law office in the world.