The only legal guideline congealing from Jackson's royal hemorrhage is that benefitting consumers through constant innovation in a fluid market is wrong. And this blatantly contradicts the rationale of antitrust itself. So much so, in fact, that it becomes quite clear His Majesty's inquest is not about delineating general guidelines. It is about destroying the very idea of general guidelines.

That is what is at stake in this finding of fact. The particular repercussions of his His Majesty's anti-corporate-screed-masquerading-as-law notwithstanding, what is most profoundly disturbing is his implicit rejection of law as a framework within which free moral agents can make informed choices. Given his ruling, how can any company of the future know in advance when improving product A is "monopolistic?" Or when serving the consumer is "predatory?" It cannot. And the moral bankruptcy of such schemes is, therefore, akin to all ex post facto legislation. It is no different from any other attempt to punish someone today for an action performed legally yesterday.

Such a vision is nothing more than an atavistic embrace of law as the institutionalization of whim. It leads to a view of human activity repugnant to the one held out by our Constitution and abhorrent to any conception of dignity. In downgrading men and women to the playthings of dictatorial caprice, it denies us our free will. Ten years after the Berlin Wall collapsed, we might pause to consider whether a vision like that should stand.

Boleslaw Z. Kabala '03 is a first-year living in Matthews Hall.