<P> For 10 years everyone--the department responsible for antitrust law enforcement, the banking industry, the Congress, and the bar--proceeded on the assumption that the 1950 amendment of the Clayton Act did not affect bank mergers . This assumption provided a major impetus to the enactment of remedial legislation, and Congress, when it finally settled on what it thought was the solution to the problem at hand, emphatically rejected the remedy now brought to life by the Court . </P> <P> Justice Goldberg wrote separately that he disagreed with the Court majority that Clayton Act § 7 applied to bank mergers, but he did not disagree with "the judgment invalidating the merger ." He said, further: </P> <P> In my opinion there is a substantial Sherman Act issue in this case, but since the Court does not reach it and since my views relative thereto would be superfluous in light of today's disposition of the case, I express no ultimate conclusion concerning it . </P> <P> In the 40 years since the Philadelphia Bank case was decided, its presumption of likelihood of adverse competitive impact and consequent violation of Clayton Act § 7, based on market share and concentration data, has undergone swings in various directions . The swings have mostly been toward an erosion of the presumption and more ready rebuttal of the presumption, as the following decisions illustrate . </P>

United states v. philadelphia national bank case brief