Donald F. Turner

He died on July 24, 1994 in Derwood, Maryland, from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

After his term in government he returned to Harvard where he taught from 1968 until he retired in 1979 as Bassey Professor of Law. In 1976 Turner was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. It was during this period that he engaged in fruitful collaboration with fellow Harvard Law professor Phillip Areeda. The two authored numerous articles together as well as an ambitious multi-volume treatise on antitrust law. On retirement he became counsel to the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering. He also served as visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center and was a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In a telephone conversation on Wednesday 23 November 1966 with Attorney General Ramsey Clark, President Johnson stated his lack of confidence in Donald Turner.

Some observers believed on his appointment to lead the Antitrust Division that Turner would be more "lenient" than his predecessor, William Horsley Orrick Jr. Others noted his views in his 1959 volume on Antitrust Policy with Carl Kaysen that corporations should be broken up when they acquired "unreasonable market power." Katzenbach, together with Treasury Secretary Henry H. Fowler and Commerce Secretary John T. Connor tried to reassure business (without promising leniency) at the Spring Meeting of the Business Council. Katzenbach said that "the most that can be said is that the department proposes and the Supreme Court disposes." The current effort would be placed on developing guidelines "under which companies can more clearly tell in advance the mergers [which] might bring antitrust action." At his Senate confirmation hearing before the subcommittee on Antitrust, Turner was closely questioned by both proponents of stricter enforcement and those who wished to roll back enforcement. Senator Hart, chairman, question him on his view that "conglomerate" mergers (those not involving either competitors or firms in the same product supply line) should not be scrutinized as strictly as other mergers. On the other hand, Republican Senator Hruska questioned whether he believed "bigness" equaled "badness." Turner nonetheless was approved by the Judiciary Committee on June 22, 1965, and two days later was confirmed by the full Senate.

Turner became prominent as the first legal scholar of antitrust to apply economic analysis to the Sherman Act and Clayton Acts. His analysis of the "Cellophane Case" against DuPont, published in The Harvard Law Review in 1956 was perhaps the first important illustration of the approach. The article was notable not only for its economic analysis but also its style, which was direct towards non-economists. He soon became an important voice on issues involving economic regulations of businesses. In 1956 he testified before the Senate Commerce Committee against two practices of the television networks, arguing that both were "clear" violations of antitrust laws: "option time" whereby affiliates were required to set aside certain time to air network programing and "must buy" where by CBS and NBC required advertisers to buy advertising time from at least 50 affiliates in order to get their sponsored program on the air.

Professor Turner married Joan Pearson in 1955. They had two children: Paul A. Turner and Katherine Turner.

Turner taught at Harvard Law School from 1954 to 1965, when he was appointed Assistant Attorney General, in which capacity he headed Antitrust Division at the United States Department of Justice under President Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson had an aversion to Harvard academics but was persuaded to appoint him after Clark Clifford, a close adviser to the President, provided the President with a review of Turner's antitrust philosophy and views. The decisive consideration for the President and Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach was to calm concerns of business leaders, whose support they believed necessary for the Administration's prosecution of the Vietnam War, over language of recent Supreme Court decisions concerning the need to protect potential competition and small business. Turner, they felt, had the intellectual prestige and professional inclination to rationalize antitrust policy in a way that would reassure the business community.

Donald Frank Turner (March 19, 1921 – July 19, 1994) was an American antitrust attorney, economist, legal scholar and educator who spent most of his career teaching at Harvard Law School. He was also Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division from 1965-68.

Turner was born on March 19, 1921, the son of a Presbyterian minister. A native of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Turner worked his way through Northwestern University where he received his undergraduate degree in 1941. He served as a lieutenant in the Navy during World War II, before he went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1947. His thesis dealt with urban economics. He obtained a teaching position at Yale University where he taught economics while working on his J.D. degree from Yale Law School which he obtained in 1950. He clerked for Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark (who had been Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust before his appointment to the Court), had a brief career in private law practice and then joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1954.