In a hallway discussion originally about Raich, we got into discussing a side issue about which no one had a good answer off the top of their head - even Prof. Steven Calabresi. Given current understandings about constitutional law, what constitutional limitations are there on the federal government's power to create/maintain a monopoly (either by statute or de facto via selective enforcement)?

We were able to come up with First Amendment limitations on creating a monopoly of the press (imagine the Feds making NPR a monopoly news source). And we thought perhaps there might be some limitations related to race or political involvement, though its hard to come up with examples of markets that could be monopolized with respect to those areas.

Certainly, under certain interpretations of the Constitution, there might be lots of limitations on the federal government's authority to take such action, but the issue we were interested in is what limitations would apply under the most commonly accepted interpretations of the Constitution (particularly the interpretations utilized by the current Court.)

Please feel free to post answers in our comments section. Thanks!