Emanuel Celler

Celler was the House sponsor behind the 1950 Celler-Kefauver amendment to the Clayton Act. It closed the asset-acquisition loophole that had allowed transactions to escape a provision focused on purchases of shares. The specific institutional lesson is that legal form can defeat an otherwise substantial prohibition. His work with Estes Kefauver widened the transactions that enforcement agencies could examine, rather than automatically outlawing every merger.