The Decline and Fall of AT&T: A Personal Recollection

"The Enduring Lessons of the Breakup of AT&T: A Twenty-Five Year Retrospective."' Conference held at the University of Pennsylvania Law School on April 18-19, 2008. In his luncheon talk at the conference, presented here in slightly revised form, Judge Posner discusses his personal involvement with the events that led up the Justice Department's major antitrust suit against AT&T that culminated in the breakup of the telephone monopoly. The stages of his involvement included participation in the work of President Johnson's Task Force on Communications Policy, consulting for AT&T in the lawsuit itself, and his negative advice to the chairman of AT&T on the latter's plans to enter the computer industry.