Judges created much of American antitrust law on a blank slate, for example, when they were forced to interpret the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, a statute whose main operative provision simply prohibits "[e]very contract, combination, ... or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce."' In enacting such a law, Congress's use of imprecise language was not a matter of carelessness in drafting. Congress plainly knew what it was doing, and it knew how to use narrow and precise language when it wanted to. In writing the Sherman Act in broad and indeterminate language, therefore, and in thus intentionally avoiding concrete language and easily understood rules, Congress was instructing the courts to create, in commonlaw fashion, pretty much the entire body of antitrust law.

Unknown, Frederick Schauer - Thinkin…, loc. 273